Chapter 1

ONE

OCTOBER 2019

Monday

From inside the black sedan, Callie looked out the window at her childhood house. It felt as though she was seeing an old friend after many years. A friend whose face was recognizable—the shape of the eyes, the tilt of the head, the splash of freckles around the nose or faint scar beneath the eye from a tumble as a child—and yet who still seemed a stranger. Of course, it was because she hadn't been back in so long. The familiar features only made the feeling of separation more acute.

The driver parked, and Callie climbed out of the car. Behind her, the parents of her brother-in-law, Joe, exited, and then she heard Chloe, her fourteen-month-old niece, sweetly chatter as Joe maneuvered her out of her car seat. The graveside service had been simple, just as her sister would have wanted it. The only fanfare came from the brilliant yellow glow of the afternoon autumn sun and the rustle of the orange and gold leaves on the branches of the large oak tree that would shade Pam's headstone, as it now sheltered those of their parents and grandparents. Joe had been the only family member to speak. He talked about how much Pam had loved this town, her house. She'd lived there all her life and never wanted to leave.

"So of course, when we became a couple, the only choice I had was to move in with her," he'd said with a sad chuckle.

Tucking a strand of her chin-length brown hair behind her ear to keep it from blowing across her face, Callie had looked at the many people sniffling and dabbing their eyes at his words. She was struck by how many people had shown up—neighbors and childhood friends and colleagues from the town's elementary school, which she and Pam had attended and where Pam had taught third grade. She'd always assumed—erroneously, evidently—that Pam and Joe lived a quiet, isolated life. Boring, even. Stifling. Maybe that was because Pam had always been such a homebody. Or maybe it was because Pam had been so hard on Callie these last few years.

"What are you fleeing from?" she'd ask when Callie found time to return her phone calls. "What are you afraid will happen if you slow down for a bit?"

"I'm not fleeing anything," Callie would answer, hating how she sounded, like a petulant child caught with the cookie she'd been told not to eat. Pam liked to mother her. It was a role she'd spent years practicing. Ten years old when Callie was born, Pam had always been more like a parent than a sibling. The two had been raised by their grandparents from the time they were young, and when both Nonna and Nonno passed away the year Callie turned twelve, it was Pam who took care of her.

Still, from the time she left for college, Callie had resented Pam's advice. Pam didn't know any more about the world than she did.

But now Callie wondered how she would manage without Pam. What if Pam's involvement was the one thing that had been keeping her life from spinning completely out of control?

She walked up the slate path that led to her childhood house, the deep-green juniper shrubs seeming to glow in the afternoon sun. It felt like a lifetime since that awful phone call from Joe last Tuesday. The next morning, she'd boarded a train from Philadelphia to Connecticut, moving in a daze. She, Joe, and Chloe were staying in the guest cottage, where Joe's parents lived. Neither Callie nor Joe had wanted to sleep in the big house without Pam.

Now, though, Callie was glad to be the first one inside, to have a moment to herself in the house before guests began arriving. Already she could hear cars turning onto the quiet street. Looking over her shoulder, she watched drivers park by the curb and passengers start to exit, the men's dark slacks and women's black dresses peeking out from beneath their fall outerwear.

Opening the unlocked front door, Callie stepped inside and hung her coat in the hall closet, feeling this regular task disquieting on a day so far from routine. To her right, Mrs. Greenbaum and two other women were arranging platters of cold cuts, salads, cheeses, and fruit, and baskets of bagels, sliced bread, and mini pastries, on the dining room table. It was covered in her grandmother's fancy white tablecloth, the one always reserved for special occasions. The three women had left the cemetery early, having volunteered to set up the post-funeral reception. Callie considered going to thank them, but changed her mind. She'd been away from home for so long and hated the thought that, aside from Mrs. Greenbaum, the women might not even recognize her. Besides, she was feeling shaky and shocked, and didn't know if she was capable of uttering a coherent sentence. She'd declined Joe's invitation to say a few words at the cemetery for these same two reasons.

Starting to kick off her black pumps, she thought better of it. It seemed more respectful to keep them on. Still, she couldn't help but think how strange it was to be here in a black dress and tights. As a kid, she'd rarely worn anything in the house but sweatshirts and sweatpants or tee shirts and terrycloth shorts, depending on the season. It had always been that kind of house. Pam had updated some of the furniture over the years, but the feel of the place, its vibe, its voice, was just as it had always been. As was the neighborhood. The houses were all similar, split-level in style and fronted by neat lawns. The school was down the block, and a small shopping strip with a café, a dress store, a fruit market, an Italian bakery, and a pizza place was a few blocks further. Back when she was in high school, she'd found the simplicity of the town stifling. She'd promised herself she would leave as soon as she could.

Grasping the banister, she started up the stairs, feeling as though she were walking through mud. It was so heavy, the weight of all her memories. So many life-changing events had taken place, so many consequential discussions had been had, so many impassioned decisions had been reached in this house. And Pam had been a part of them all: Pam working with Callie to learn her lines when she was chosen to play Elle in the middle school production of Legally Blonde . Pam helping her pack for her semester abroad in Vienna when she was a college junior. Pam popping open a bottle of champagne when Callie got her first job, as a publicity assistant for an off-Broadway theater. Pam sitting next to her on the living room sofa last winter, pointedly asking why Callie, now thirty-two, never seemed to get serious with any of the men she dated. Pam as a beautiful bride, a joyful soon-to-be mom, an exhausted but happy new mother holding Chloe in her arms as if a hole she'd always felt in her heart had finally been filled.

Pam on the phone with her three weeks ago, begging her not to move to Philadelphia. Even now, Callie could picture Pam stroking Chloe's head as she slept soundly in her crib, could see Pam's dark, fine hair parted in the middle and pulled away from her makeup-less face, could hear her voice, distressed but soft, so as not to disturb the baby. "You're far away in New York City already—an hour's train ride is a lot. How can you move even further? What's in Philadelphia, anyway?"

"It's a fun city. Why not?" Callie had answered. The truth was, she needed to get as far away from New York as she could. She'd have preferred to go abroad, and would have done precisely that, except that she'd misplaced her passport. She thought she might have left it somewhere in this house, as she'd made a quick visit here last March after taking an impromptu trip to Iceland to see the Northern Lights. She hadn't wanted to wait to replace her passport once she'd noticed it missing last month, because she wanted to get out of New York right away. So she'd chosen to move to a nearby big city where she hoped she could build a new life.

"We have no family on our side, Callie, except you and me," Pam had said, and Callie could feel the force of Pam's entreaty through the phone line. "Don't you even want a family anymore? Don't you want Chloe to know who you are?"

"She's a baby. She doesn't care about anyone except you and Joe for now."

"But what are you going to do? How are you going to support yourself?"

"Believe it or not, there are jobs in Philadelphia. I'm sure I'll find something."

"Can't you at least come home so we can talk this out face-to-face? Come home. Come for a stay, a nice long stay. A few weeks, even. We can enjoy each other like we used to."

"I can't. My lease starts in two days. I'll come home soon. When it makes sense, I'll come visit."

"Why does a visit home have to make sense? Home is home, family is family?—"

"And people are who they are. You know me, I need to keep moving. I'm not like you. I never stay in one place…"

Pam had known she wasn't getting the whole story. Callie could tell by her frustrated sigh, her resigned hum of acceptance. She could be annoying, Pam, but she was smart. Still, Callie couldn't bring herself to reveal the truth about why she needed to move out of New York City so fast. She was too ashamed. She didn't want to face Pam's judgment, her disappointment. Her renewed assessment that Callie was making a mess of her life.

"Fine," Pam had finally said, her voice clipped. "Go, do what you want."

"That's exactly what I'm trying to do," Callie had replied.

"But don't forget," Pam had added with a tinge of softness before Callie could hang up the phone. "You always can come home. This is still your home and always will be. Do you understand?"

Callie had nodded, hoping Pam would somehow feel the gesture through the phone line. Because she knew what her sister meant. She and Pam had inherited the house when their parents died, and Pam and Joe had been in the process of slowly buying Callie's half. Pam wanted Callie to still feel like it was hers. Callie had appreciated the sentiment so much that she felt tears form in her eyes, and she'd struggled to keep her voice steady as she said goodbye. She couldn't let Pam know how conflicted she was about leaving. She had to make this move to Philly work, and she had too much pride to reveal her true motives.

Callie had no idea what would happen with the house now. But that was a matter for another time.

Reaching the second floor, she approached the bedroom that had once belonged to her parents. It was Pam and Joe's now. They'd made some changes, painting the mauve walls white, putting in a pretty platform bed with a silky gray comforter and simple metal headboard, and replacing the old, dark furniture with modern, white wood. Callie crossed the threshold. The room smelled like Pam, that vanilla-scented body fragrance she liked so much, and Callie sat on the edge of the bed and inhaled the sweet, clean smell. For a moment, she felt at home. She realized this was exactly what she'd been hoping to feel ever since she'd set foot in the house. But then she glanced down at her black dress, and the feeling passed. Lifting her gaze, she spotted a framed photo of Pam and Joe on their wedding day, Pam looking so happy in her simple satin gown, her hair loose on her shoulders. Pam had grown up shy and fearful, unable to play sports or go to sleepovers or do so many things kids normally do because of a heart condition she'd been born with—hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, Callie had memorized the term long ago—that could make her feel weak and dizzy. She'd never even expected to get married.

But about two years ago, she'd run into Joe, a high school friend, at a singles night at the community center. Both nearly forty, they'd fallen for one another as though they were lovesick teenagers. Their at-home wedding, planned by Joe's mother, had been small and elegant. For Pam, it was all like a dream she'd never allowed herself to have.

Callie left the master bedroom and went further down the hall, stopping at the doorway to her old bedroom. Pam always called it Callie's room, even though Callie hadn't lived there since she'd left for college. Callie's childhood furniture was still in place, her wooden student desk and six-drawer dresser, and although Pam had replaced the bed linens, the new comforter was pale yellow, just as the old one had been. Callie never understood why Pam didn't make more changes, and she bristled at what she'd seen as subtle pressure to reign in her adventurous streak.

"It's ridiculous," she'd say when she visited during college breaks. "I don't live here anymore. Do something else with this room. Make it a game room or something!"

But Pam wouldn't hear of it. She liked it as it was.

With a sigh, Callie turned to the room next door, Pam's old bedroom. This was Chloe's room now, and it was charming, with a pretty white crib and dressing table and a big toy chest with "Chloe" stenciled on the front in pink balloon-type letters. Pam had loved pink. "There'll be plenty of time for her to choose her own path," she'd said. "But as long as she's a baby, I want her life to be filled with pink and lace and frills." Pam's delight was palpable. She was just so happy being a mommy.

The one piece of furniture that Pam had kept here from the old days was her student desk and chair. The desk was just like Callie's, with one horizontal drawer and three larger drawers stacked down the side. Callie walked further into the room and slid her hand along the surface of the desk, then opened the horizontal drawer. Inside were all the things that Pam loved: Her colored pencils. Her sketchpad. Her embroidery. Her reading journal. Callie fingered the pencils, half expecting that they would dissolve like a sugar cube in a hot cup of tea. How could Pam's things still be here, if Pam was gone? How could they exist? How could Callie exist, if she was no longer the impulsive, misguided younger sister who so often drove Pam crazy?

"It was an accident," Joe had told her when he'd called. Evidently Carolyn Greenbaum, the retired school librarian who'd lived next door for as long as Callie could remember and helped out with the baby occasionally when Pam was at work, had gone over in the late afternoon to drop off some hand-me-down clothes that her niece's toddler had outgrown. When there was no answer, she'd tried the front door, and when she found it unlocked, she let herself in. She hadn't been surprised that the house appeared empty, as she'd assumed Pam was capitalizing on the unseasonably warm October weather to take Chloe on a stroll around the neighborhood. She'd decided to make a cup of tea and wait. But when she'd entered the kitchen, she'd found Pam on the floor, a trail of blood emerging from below her ear. The paramedics surmised that she'd become lightheaded, fallen, and struck her head on the countertop, while Chloe napped upstairs. Joe was still at the office.

Callie was surprised but not shocked by the explanation. Pam's heart condition had been serious, and their parents and grandparents had always been anxious, believing that she was living on borrowed time. Still, she'd defied the odds for so long. She'd been advised that having a baby could put a strain on her heart, but she'd been extra careful during her pregnancy. She'd rested and eaten well. She thought she had this heart thing beat, and she'd convinced everyone around her of the same. Even Joe.

But they all should have been smarter, Callie thought as she sat down on Pam's old desk chair. The more you thought you had things under control, the more you were setting yourself up for a big fall. Once when she was in middle school, Callie had read a story about a couple that had a baby long after they'd thought they'd completed their family because they needed some genetic material to help save one of their older children's lives. After that, Callie had sometimes wondered if her parents had had her to save Pam. So there'd be one more body around to help rescue Pam in an emergency. Why else would her parents have had her so many years after her sister was born? Yes, she could have been merely a mistake. But what if she wasn't?

Callie shook her head to clear her mind. Looking at Chloe's crib, she remembered what Pam had said to her the day she'd brought Chloe home from the hospital, Joe and Callie trailing her with diapers, blankets, tubes of petroleum jelly, and all the other supplies the nurses had loaded them up with.

"I know this is going to sound insane," she began, as she put Chloe down in the bassinet she'd borrowed from a neighbor, which she'd positioned in the center of the living room, right in the spot that got the most sunlight. "But I feel like if I were to die tomorrow, it would be okay. I did what I wanted to do while I was here on this earth. I gave the world Chloe. My work is done here, and anything else is gravy."

Callie had rolled her eyes. "I think they gave you too many drugs," she joked.

"No, I mean it," Pam had insisted. "Remember what Grandpa used to say, that Jewish thing he loved to repeat? ‘He who saves one life saves the world entire.' I saved the world entire. With my beautiful, beautiful daughter."

"You gave birth to her. You didn't save her."

"Same thing. Or close enough. Who knows what wonderful things Chloe will do? Just by being born? Just by showing up?"

Callie had laughed and gone over to the bassinet to look at her niece. She was so taken at that moment with Pam's total rapture over her newborn daughter. And yet, now those words, their grandfather's favorite phrase, seemed ominous, almost accusatory. I could have been here to save Pam, she thought. It was true—she could have visited more, she could have called more. That would have been the right thing to do, especially after hearing Pam's voice, begging her to stop home for a nice, long visit before she made the big move to Philadelphia. Maybe without being totally aware of it, Pam sensed some change in her own health. And maybe if Callie had come home, she would have seen something in Pam's appearance, in her gait, in her speech—something that would have alerted her that Pam needed to go back to the doctor. Sisters saw things that others—even husbands—might not. But Callie had been determined to get herself to Philadelphia, protecting her ego as she tried to put her life back in order.

Callie turned back to Pam's old desk. The bottom drawer was the one where Pam had kept special projects she and Callie were working on. Like the photo album they'd created for their grandparents' anniversary one year. And the scripts they wrote for pretend movies, along with the VHS tapes on which they'd recorded themselves speaking lines from those scripts using Nonno's old camcorder. Of course, the tapes were now impossible to watch because nobody owned VHS players anymore. Had Pam kept them all these years? If so, Callie wanted to find them and take them before someone else went through this desk. No doubt Joe's mother would soon clean out everything, thinking she was being helpful. Callie couldn't let her take the only recordings she might have of Pam's high-pitched, melodic voice. She should retrieve them now, so she could find a place that could transfer them onto a thumb drive or something.

She opened the bottom drawer and looked around, but didn't see any old tapes. Mostly there were pens and pads and brochures from a local toddler program, presumably for Chloe. But beneath the brochures, she noticed a wooden jewelry box, about the size of the boxes that once held her grandfather's expensive cigars, with a tiny combination lock built into the front. Pam had loved locking special things in boxes like this. She would always use Callie's birthday as the code. May 29th: 0-5-2-9.

This box was locked, and Callie wondered what was inside.

She removed the box from the drawer and set it on top of the desk. Not really expecting it to work, she turned the wheels to her birthday. Surprisingly, the lock released.

She braced herself for what the box might be holding. Maybe some notes, or birthday cards, or a photo or drawing, or a few of those old recordings. No doubt whatever it was, it would make her cry, but she didn't care. She probably could use a good cry. She lifted the lid, only to find that none of those things she'd expected were there. Instead, she found a printout of what looked to be an Italian train schedule. It started at Roma Termini, which Callie assumed was the train station in Rome. And there was a circle halfway down the page, drawn with orange crayon, surrounding a town called Caccipulia.

Callie recognized the name—this was the town where her grandmother had been born, a town that had been destroyed by the Nazis soon after her grandparents fled from there. Nonna had never wanted to talk about her childhood or her life with Nonno before they came to America. Yet, sometimes little spurts of memories would show up, damaging spurts, like tiny leaks that appear when gaps in a roof are not adequately repaired. Once when she was nine and Pam was nineteen, their grandparents had taken them on a vacation to Yosemite National Park, way across the country in California. It was a rare thing, a vacation, since Nonno had worked as a pediatric surgeon and would rarely take time off. One day, they walked through a grove of giant sequoias, some thought to be more than two thousand years old. Nonno had explained that the trees had been there before almost anything else, and he'd mused about how much the trees had seen, how many secrets they had.

"If the trees could talk," Nonno had murmured, his thick mustache spreading. "Oh, the stories they'd tell."

Suddenly Nonna was crying. Her eyes were glassy, and she was wiping at tears with her fingertips. "Maybe it's better that they can't," she said. "Maybe that's why they stand so tall. Because they never have to admit mistakes, or…" She breathed in and looked at Nonno. "She haunts me still. Emilia. I dreamed about her last night."

Nonno took her hand. "I know," he said softly.

"Such a mistake—and everyone died."

"It wasn't your fault. I think of Caccipulia, too."

"Nonna, what's wrong?" Pam asked. "Who's Emilia?"

"It's nothing. She's fine," Nonno said and kissed Nonna's cheek. "It's only memories," he told her. "They can't hurt you. It's because of what I said about the trees, isn't it?"

"She saved us," Nonna whispered. "And I never got to thank her."

"Nonna, are you okay?" Callie asked. It was distressing to see her grandmother like that.

"She just needs a moment," Nonno said. "Girls, please. Let her be."

A few minutes later Nonna took a deep breath and said she was better, and Nonno asked who was ready for ice cream.

It was the first time Callie had ever thought about her grandparents' past. Licking her ice cream cone, she wondered what Nonna was talking about. She'd heard her grandmother mention the name Emilia before, but just assumed she was talking about an old friend. Now, it seemed, Emilia was much more than that. Who was she, and how had she saved Nonna and Nonno? And what had happened to her? Callie had felt unsettled for the rest of their vacation week. Maybe it was because she and Pam had already lived with tragedy, having lost their parents so young. And maybe it also had something to do with Pam's illness, which always lurked behind the scenes. Knowing how much went unsaid in their family felt like walking through that heavily wooded forest in Yosemite. You never knew when something would pop out.

The night they returned home, Callie had climbed into Pam's bed and buried her head under the covers. Pam knew right away what was wrong.

"It's what happened with Nonna, right?" she'd said. "Who's Emilia? It bothered me, too."

"And why can't they thank her?"

"Probably because she's dead. Nonna said everyone died."

"Then how did she save them? And what was the mistake Nonna made? If we ask her, you know she won't answer, and then Nonno will say we're upsetting her. But it's not fair to keep this from us."

"How about this?" Pam said. "One day, you and I will go to Italy. And we'll find our way to Caccipulia, or whatever is there now. And we'll learn what happened and even who Emilia was and how she saved them, and what big mistake they're hiding. So you don't need to feel bad, okay? We'll learn all about their lives, so there'll be no more secrets."

It sounded like a good plan. But Callie still felt a separation from her grandparents that never eased. Even after her grandparents died, she never forgot that name, Emilia. Who was she? A sister? A friend? A daughter, maybe? What was her role in their grandparents' lives? She and Pam occasionally talked about taking that trip to Caccipulia, but they had never gotten around to going. By the time Callie was in high school, she and Pam had started to drift apart. They never again were as close as they'd been that night after the trip to California.

Picking up the train schedule, Callie took a closer look. Along the side of the orange circle, in Pam's handwriting, were the words Albergo Annagiule , along with a street address— 81 Via Sopra il Mare . She looked up the Italian word albergo on her phone and found that it meant hotel. The Hotel Annagiule.

Callie didn't know what to make of this. Could Pam have been planning a trip to Caccipulia? But why would she do that without speaking to Callie first? Callie had opened the drawer wanting to feel closer to her sister, but now she felt even further apart. Pam never traveled. She didn't like traveling, and she didn't have any desire to go anywhere. Last spring, a few of the teachers at Pam's school were planning a girls' weekend upstate over in July, and they'd wanted Pam to come. Joe had encouraged her to go, and had urged Callie to help convince her. He wanted to give her a break. He was willing to take the entire week off from work, and his parents had also volunteered to help with Chloe, who would be eleven months old by then, no longer an infant. And Mrs. Greenbaum was available to help, too. But Pam had said no. She didn't want to be away from home. She and Joe had barely even had a honeymoon, just a long beach weekend out on the east end of Long Island. Neither one of them felt a need to go any further.

Callie looked into the box again and spied her grandparents' wedding picture, the five-by-seven black-and-white photo that was normally on the mantel downstairs in a silver frame with the names Corinne and Tom printed along the bottom. They looked elegant and sophisticated, her grandmother in a slim, white suit with a veiled hat, her light hair parted on the side and flipping up just beneath her chin, a neat curl resting on one side of her forehead. Her grandfather was in a black suit, so dashing with his dark, wavy hair and curved mustache. Callie wondered why Pam had taken it from the living room. Why had she locked it away?

Beneath the wedding picture was a photo that seemed to have been copied from an old newspaper, maybe from the 1930s or 1940s. It showed three teenage girls in fancy gowns, looking as though they were going to some kind of party or ball. An arrow had been drawn pointing to the smallest girl, who was shorter than the others and looked younger, and was wearing a sparkling tiara. The arrow was in orange crayon, so Callie suspected that Pam had drawn it.

Looking further, Callie discovered a very old, black-and-white photo of a stone building, the entranceway rimmed with lush vines and topped with a sign that read Ristorante in elegant cursive. It looked like a very fancy restaurant, and while Callie assumed it had to have been located in Italy, there was no clue as to what city or town.

She put the photos aside, and next found a piece of five-by-seven cardstock, creased and yellowed. On it was some kind of list in red, handwritten in Italian: pollo , pomodori , riso …chicken, tomatoes, rice maybe? Above the list were the words Caccipulia Club Della Cena . She looked up the meaning on her phone. Caccipulia Supper Club , read the translation.

Then, on the back of the card, she saw some additional writing, which she also translated.

Devi restituirmi questo. Sarò in attesa per te .

You must return this to me. I will be waiting for you .

The name "Emilia" appeared beneath the words.

Callie studied the childlike handwriting. Could this be the Emilia that Nonna had mentioned on that trip to California—the girl who haunted her dreams?

Callie leaned back. Why had Pam gathered these things into this little box—a box with a lock that only Callie knew the code to? She put the card beside the train schedule. And that's when she noticed, at the very bottom of the box, the strangest thing of all: Two boarding passes for a flight to Rome. ITA Airways 603. They were dated for this afternoon.

One was in Pam's name.

And the other was in Callie's name. Attached with a paper clip to Callie's missing passport.