Chapter 22

TWENTY-TWO

OCTOBER 1943

Emilia stared at Corinna. "Switzerland? Tomorrow? But what about the Resistance group in Milan that's supposed to help him?"

"We can't wait here any longer. We have to set out on our own." Corinna tilted her head. "Come on, Emilia. Don't make this any harder. You knew this day was coming."

"But I didn't want it to." Emilia shook her head. "I thought there would be more time, that you'd be with me at least until my sisters came back. I don't want to be here without you."

She rose up on her knees on the bed. "Let's just tell your mother the truth. She's smart, she'll figure out something better. Let's tell her about you and Tomas. Let's talk to her now?—"

"No," she said. "Mama would want me to stay here. She would try to stop me."

"And that's not okay? If she could keep you both safe?"

"She can't," Corinna said. "She will want to, but she can't."

"So you're just going to leave? Leave your home, your mother?"

"Emilia, we have to," she said. "If she tries to save us, she will put herself in danger. He is wanted by the Nazis. Please try to understand. There are whole worlds out there. Places where we can start fresh."

Emilia sighed. She'd heard Tomas say that very thing. That night when she was hiding behind the tree.

"We'll come back here someday," Corinna said. "When all this is over.

"Oh, Emilia," she said sitting down next to her on the bed. "I love him so much. When I look in his eyes, I feel that it's okay to leave my home, because I've found my home. He's my home. I don't even feel at home here the way I feel it when I'm with him. It's like he is the person I was born to find. And he makes me become the person I want to be. I just…"

She shook her head. "I don't know why I'm telling you this. You're so young and you've been through so much. I don't mean to make you listen to all this. But one day I hope you'll find someone like him, too. That you'll feel what I'm feeling…"

Corinna walked to the window, and Emilia watched her look outside. She didn't want Corinna to feel bad. Corinna's thoughts about Tomas were the one positive thing she'd heard lately. Corinna's faith that she could escape with Tomas and go somewhere else, find a new home, build a new life, make something wonderful from this horror that was the world now…it elevated Emilia, because it made her believe there was a way out. Go forth, her father would say. That was the lesson he had taught her all those years ago.

"You don't have to be sorry," Emilia said. "I love to hear you talk about him. It makes the world feel a little less…awful…"

Corinna came over and hugged her. "So will you do this for us? Will you draw the last code?"

Emilia paused. "Can't you?" she begged Corinna. "Can't you go to the Possano house and talk to him yourself? The other codes were fun, romantic. But this is too big for me to take on?—"

She stopped because Corinna was shaking her head. "If I went there to see him, they would suspect why, and they would send for Mama. And they would make him leave, right then, right at that moment. Emilia, he is Jewish and a Resistance fighter, he is an outsider, and as much as they care about him, they all want him gone. They have been kind and they have been generous. But now they are scared. And people behave badly when they are scared, I'm afraid.

"Your sisters would want you to do this for me," she said. "And your papa would, too. They would want you to have courage."

Emilia nodded. Courage.

Courage, she repeated to herself late that night, sitting up in bed, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. A fierce wind kicked up outside, rattling the window. Her summer on Parissi Island felt years and years in the past; the draft was an ominous reminder that winter was barely a stone's throw away.

Across the room, Corinna slept soundly. Emilia could hear her breathing. The steadiness of the sound had proven comforting on so many nights. It had helped Emilia sleep on even the most terrible nights, the sad nights right after her father had died, the desperate nights when she longed for her sisters so hard that her chest ached. She was surprised that Corinna could sleep so peacefully—although the more she thought about it, the more she knew it made sense. Corinna was sleeping the sleep of someone with a settled conscience. Someone who felt no indecision at all.

And yet, Emilia felt nothing but indecision. What was she going to do? By tomorrow she would have to decide: either she would draw the code Corinna would give her so the menu card would be carried to the Possano household, the deliverer unknowingly setting the stage for Corinna's departure; or she would draw something else, and Tomas would leave on his own, believing that Corinna had changed her mind when she didn't show up at the specified place.

" Lech L'cha ," Emilia whispered, remembering the Hebrew name of the Abraham story her father had told her, the one with the command to go forth. She could hear her father saying it, that funny, guttural "ha" sound of Hebrew that always made her think of someone clearing their throat. He always loved those sacred stories. It came so naturally to him, the words, the Hebrew words, the pronunciation. But to her, the words were strange, and they didn't sound right when she tried to imitate them. She was not a Jew. She was not raised to be a Jew. And yet, she was her father's daughter. And it meant something to her, the stories he'd shared, the way he'd prayed each year on the anniversary of her mother's death and the death of the baby who would have been her little sister. She would not have been the family's baby, if that baby had lived. She would have been an older sister, like her own two older sisters.

But that's not what happened. She was the youngest. She was only fifteen. How could they not be here, Annalisa and Giulia, to tell her what to do?

She felt the tears burn in her eyes as she clutched her hands together around her knees and shook her head, her eyes closed, Corinna's breathing in the background. "How could you do this to me?" she whispered in her mind to her sisters. "How could you have sent me back without you? What secret promise did you make to each other to stay together but make me leave? You're my sisters! How could you leave me alone?" She pursed her lips together, trying to hold back the words that were in her mind and needed to come out. She held them as long as she could, and then took a deep breath and let them emerge.

"I hate you!" she hissed into the air. "I hate you both!"

She listened, hoping the hiss would echo in her ears for a long time, for the rest of the night, even. It had felt good to say that, and she wanted the moment to last. But too soon, the sound had disappeared, and she was back to where she'd started. Alone in the chilly silence. Unable to sleep, unable to decide, unable to accept that this night would end and things would need to move forward, one way or another. Closing her eyes, she wrote a letter to her sisters in her head:

Dear Annalisa and Giulia,

I don't understand. How is it possible for the world to be like this? How do you make the world be the way it should be? How do you do that? How can I do that?

I wish you were here to explain it all to me.

She considered getting up and writing out the words on paper. But she knew she didn't have to send this letter. She knew what her sisters would say.

They'd tell her to side with love.

She thought of what Corinna had said, the words that were too disturbing to have focused on before. But now she had to face them. He is Jewish and he is an outsider…they all want him gone… his mere existence puts them in danger . Was that what Corinna actually thought? Was that what this whole town had always felt? The neighbors who had cared for her and her sisters so completely and wholeheartedly when they were young. Who had sympathized with her father and made sure he always had food for his young motherless daughters, who had trusted them with their delicate table linens handed down from generations, who trusted him to repair and remake the most important garments of their lives, wedding dresses and baptismal gowns. Was he always an outsider? Were the four of them—her father, herself, and her sisters—always outsiders?

Or was Corinna right? Was it fear at this horrible moment in history that was confusing everyone, making them say things they didn't mean, feel things they didn't really feel? She looked over at Corinna again. The moonlight lit up Corinna's face, painting stripes across her forehead reflecting the slats of the window blinds. The thoughts she had were terrifying, awful, scary.

But it was the image in her mind that was the most powerful, more powerful than the thoughts. The image she'd seen the first night Tomas had arrived in town and Corinna had gone to meet him. How he'd gripped her shoulders, how she'd held his face, how he'd pressed his lips against hers, how she'd let her body sink against his. The world was crazy, falling apart, and yet for a moment all that mattered was the two of them together. He'd moved his hands to her head, one on each side, while her fingers stayed pressed against his cheeks. He'd leaned forward, pressing his forehead to hers, using his thumbs to wipe the tears falling from her eyes. They'd been breathless—she'd seen Corinna's chest heaving up and down, she'd heard Corinna's heavy exhales. She'd heard Tomas's quiet, soothing voice, knew he was saying something beautiful and wonderful and reassuring. He'd uttered something that she couldn't make out, but she'd seen Corinna nod—again and again as Tomas soothed her.

What was it she'd been watching? She didn't have the words to describe it. She didn't have the experience to know it, to understand it. It was love, maybe, but it was more. They were a force, the two of them. They were something new, something bigger than just two people embracing. There was an energy, a private energy, a huge field of will and determination and inevitability that existed when they were together. It was something that couldn't be broken, or shouldn't be broken.

It's what they are together, she thought now. It's what they make as a pair. It's what they will bring to the future. She didn't know why, but she suddenly felt that the future of the world depended on Corinna and Tomas becoming one. They had to go forth. That was the message of her father's story.

And that was the message Papa was giving her now. He had fallen in love with her mother—he a lowly tailor, she an heiress. Two people who never should have been together. And yet they couldn't be separated. And the family they made was here. Her. And maybe, maybe she had been created fifteen years ago, created from the love between her parents, so that she would be here at this very moment. So that she could make sure that another love, another pairing, could happen.

She slid down in her bed. Now she knew what she would do. She would write the code. And she would enable Corinna to leave.

It would all happen tomorrow.