Chapter 7

SEVEN

OCTOBER 2019

Tuesday

That evening at the airport, Callie checked her suitcase and proceeded through security to her gate. With an hour to go before boarding, she found a seat and reached into her tote bag for Pam's wooden box. Slowly, she lifted the lid, thinking how Pam had closed and locked it maybe as recently as a few days ago. She studied the expired boarding passes and the menu card with its note on the back, and her grandparents' wedding photograph. The collection of items made her feel more distant from Pam than ever.

How she wished she were going on this trip with Pam! Or even better, that she was already in Italy, that she and Pam had used the tickets Pam had bought. But most of all, she wished she could have been with Pam when she fell. If only she hadn't been so stubborn, too proud to come home. Maybe then, Pam would be alive now. Maybe they'd have already started to repair their relationship. To be as close as they were on that snowy day they bought the sweets from the Italian bakery and feasted on them in front of the TV.

Still, it had been so hard to bear Pam's judgments lately, her harsh reactions to practically everything Callie did.

"I thought you liked what I am," Callie remembered saying during their last phone call three weeks ago. "Always running around on new adventures and such. You used to tell me that."

"Because it's what you wanted to hear. And because you were young. But you're older now. And the truth is, you're not running around. It's more like you're always running away."

"That's ridiculous. What would I be running away from?"

"I don't know, Callie. Is it me? Or something else?"

Callie sighed, the imagined conversation echoing in her ears. She'd always tried to tell herself that Pam had supported her choices, even though they weren't the ones she'd choose for herself. That she just wanted to be sure Callie was safe and happy. But Pam had clearly recognized something troubling deep inside of Callie—a need to always be somewhere she couldn't stay for too long. Had Callie stumbled on the truth just now, in her imagination? Had she actually been running away from Pam?

No, Callie thought. Of course not. She loved Pam. And she loved home. She simply didn't want to live the kind of life Pam did. It was too quiet, too small. She'd alternated between rejecting it completely and thinking there was something appealing about it that she just didn't get. Sometimes she'd even felt a tinge of jealousy, wishing she didn't always have a sense that if she didn't keep moving, she'd be missing out.

And yet, Pam had decided to step out of her comfort zone when she organized this mysterious trip for the two of them. What did that mean? Were she and her sister more alike than Callie ever thought? Or alike in some way she didn't understand?

Suddenly Callie felt bad for being critical of Pam's life. In so many ways, Pam had been the best sister. Callie had relied on her when she was young. Nonna, who'd run the household almost single-handedly since Nonno worked so many hours at the hospital, had found Callie to be a handful. She couldn't keep up with Callie's constant activity. For her part, Callie never understood why her grandmother found her so hard to deal with. At eight years old, she didn't recognize that Nonna didn't have the stamina of her friends' mothers, who were far younger than she was. Callie didn't see why what she was doing, or wanted to do, was always such an ordeal. Just wanting to go out to a movie with her friends? Just wanting to try a dance class, a guitar class, a gymnastics workshop, just wanting to enter a bike race or join a softball team with games all over the state?

Pam, who was a freshman at the local community college when Callie was eight, would often step in to drive her to wherever she wanted to be. "It's not you," she'd say as she went to get the car keys from the hook in the kitchen. "It's just the situation." And that always made her feel better.

Callie turned back to the box and pulled out the train schedule with the town of Caccipulia circled, and the name of the hotel: Albergo Annagiule. She took out her tablet and searched for the place, but the only website that came up was for something called the " Annagiule Scuola di Cucina, " which she discovered translated as "cooking school." She wondered if Pam had googled this as well, if Pam had intentionally chosen to stay somewhere connected to cooking, and what she should make of that. Because there was also that photo of a restaurant in the box, she remembered. She dug further and pulled it out. Studying the proud sign over the front door, she wondered if this cooking school had anything to do with the restaurant. It was hard to say, as she had no idea what the word "Annagiule" referred to or how it could possibly be connected to Nonna.

What she did know was that Nonna had been an amazing cook. She never owned a cookbook or referred to recipes yet somehow she knew how to combine ingredients in ways nobody would ever think of.

"That's what you learn in war," she'd told them as she served bizarre-sounding but utterly delicious dishes, like lamb filled with almond paste or eggplant coated with lemon and tiny bits of chocolate. "You learn how not to search for what you want, but to create with what you have." Cooking always made Nonna smile. And she looked beautiful when she smiled, Callie remembered, her teeth so even and white, and her blue eyes shining beneath feathered gray bangs. The only other thing sure to make her smile was Nonno. Theirs was a love so strong, a love that seemed unique compared to how she'd seen her friends' parents or grandparents look at one another.

The gate agent announced that the flight would begin boarding in thirty minutes, and Callie went back to her tablet. She was intrigued by the cooking school she'd found, and wondered if she could learn more about the town where her grandparents had come from, the town they never wanted to return to. Since she hadn't found any information about the hotel, she decided to see if searching for Caccipulia would yield more. All she knew was what she had gleaned from the train schedule in Pam's box—that it was south and slightly west of Rome, an hour away by train. She typed "Caccipulia" into her browser, and was pleased when a list of websites popped up. The first listing was a link to an excerpt from a book titled Italy Over the Decades: The Ten Most Historic Small Towns on Italy's Mediterranean Coast .

She clicked on the link and read:

In its heyday during the 1930s, the picturesque town of Caccipulia was a small but bustling center of culture and commerce, the main boulevard filled with shops, restaurants, cafés, and other thriving businesses. Located south of Rome and nestled between the Mediterranean Sea and the foothills of the Apennine Mountains, it was removed from the effects of Mussolini's Fascist policies, Hitler's rise to power, and the growing unrest in Europe. Despite the alliance between Italy and Germany, signed in 1936, and the racial laws that put harsh restrictions on the ability of Italian Jews to work, own property, and go to school, the enclave's small community of Jews was deeply integrated into the fabric of everyday life, and the laws initially had little effect on the lives of its Jewish inhabitants.

But things changed in the early 1940s, and again, more dramatically, in September of 1943, when Italy surrendered to the Allies in Sicily, and the Nazis responded by invading the country from the north. Almost instantaneously, Germany occupied Rome and the northern part of the country. Food became scarce, and residents in the central part of the country could only hope that the Allies from the south would reach them before the Nazis streamed down from the north. By October of that year, the roundups of Rome's Jews for transport to Nazi concentration camps, principally Auschwitz, began.

In late October, 1943, the Nazis reached Caccipulia and the surrounding small towns, and began going door to door in search of Jews. While some Jews had left the town, taking their chances by trying to escape to Switzerland or travel south to where the Allies were in control, many had gone into hiding. Nevertheless, those who'd remained were rooted out, in some cases with the help of Italians who would reveal Jewish hiding places to the Nazis in exchange for money or food.

In the end, the Jews of Caccipulia were either killed outright or sent off to Poland where they died in concentration camps. Also killed were non-Jews who were known anti-Fascists or who had hidden or helped Jews escape detection, as an example to others.

Callie felt herself recoil at this news. The history of this little town that Pam had intended to visit was nightmarish. She wondered if its fate was somehow tied to her grandmother's decision to never return. She knew that she'd never have wanted to return, if this had happened in the town where she was raised. And what about that woman, Emilia, she thought—the one who Nonna said had saved her and Nonno? Did the destruction of Caccipulia figure into that relationship?

Callie read on, wondering how the town had rebuilt itself, how people could possibly settle there, given its horrific past.

But Caccipulia stands out for a reason other than the brutality of the Nazis, because of its connection to one of the most storied and wealthy families Italy ever produced. Not too far south of this town is the Mediterranean island of Parissi, home to Parissi Castle. Patricio Parissi, the last patriarch of the family, was an inventor and patron of the arts, and in the early- to mid-twentieth century, he opened his castle to the most promising of artists, sculptors, writers, philosophers and more of his day. At one point, residents also included his three nieces, who were born and raised in Caccipulia. They were the daughters of Patricio's sister, Olivia.

Sadly, Parissi Island was stormed by the Nazis during the war and most of the residents—including Patricio—were slaughtered. While their remains were never found, it's believed that his two older nieces were among the dead. The youngest sister returned to Caccipulia before the Nazis arrived on the island. While her half-Jewish parentage put her at risk, she was hidden by neighbors and survived the war. It's unclear where she spent the three decades after the war; but in her fifties she returned to Caccipulia, where she single-handedly funded a major rebuilding of the town, later opening a hotel, a cooking school and a bakery known as the Pasticceria Sancino.

Below the text was a picture of the bakery's glass door. The image made Callie feel a new pang of grief. She'd always loved Italian bakeries, as had Pam. They'd both enjoyed their treats at the Italian bakery back home, especially the ones they'd brought home on the day of the big snowstorm. She remembered how delicious they'd tasted, how much fun it was to be with her big sister safe at home that day, with treats to share. With no knowledge that by the next morning, their parents would be dead.

Callie lowered her tablet and sighed. This was such a sad story, and one she wasn't sure she was glad to know. It felt a little too close to home, a younger sister who became the family's sole survivor. How sad this girl must have been, to have had her two older sisters murdered. How brave, too, to move back to her childhood town decades later to pick up the pieces. And to start three new businesses—a hotel, a cooking school, and a bakery. Callie couldn't help but wonder how this woman had gone on, having lived through so much. Where did that kind of strength come from? What drove her to return to her childhood hometown?

Still curious, Callie searched for the Pasticceria Sancino in Caccipulia. Again, there was no website, but she did find an entry about the bakery in an online travel guide. The article had been translated into several languages, including English. Callie was enchanted by what she read:

A trip to Caccipulia is not complete without a stop at the little bakery known as Pasticceria Sancino. It is here that you will taste the most delightful treats imaginable. Sponge cakes that melt in your mouth, chocolate smooth as silk, and spun-sugar tarts with fruits that add a luscious tang. Though the owner, Emilia Sancino, stays isolated most days, she does occasionally deign to give cooking lessons to willing students who will tolerate her harsh tone and impatience. Don't miss a stop here.

Callie gasped so loudly that the woman next to her startled. She put her hand to her mouth, even though it was too late to stifle the sound. Emilia . That was the name of the person who'd haunted Nonna's dreams. And just below the paragraph that mentioned Emilia was an old photo with three teenage girls in long ball gowns. There was no mistaking the picture—it was the same one inside Pam's wooden box, the same one on which Pam had drawn an orange arrow toward the smallest one with the tiara. Below the picture was a caption:

Emilia Sancino, right, the youngest Sancino sister, pictured here in 1943 with her two older sisters. Now ninety-one, she owns the Pasticceria Sancino as well as a hotel, the Albergo Annagiule, and a cooking school.

Callie read the caption again. There seemed to be no other conclusion. The woman in these articles, Emilia Sancino, had to be Nonna's friend Emilia, the one who had saved Nonna and Nonno, the one whose memory made Nonna cry that day among the sequoias. This is what Pam had evidently discovered, why she'd put the picture of the three sisters in the wooden box and drawn the arrow.

But it didn't make sense, she thought. Nonna had said that everyone she knew in Caccipulia had died. That was why she couldn't go back to thank Emilia. She had made some mistake, and she couldn't forgive herself.

So how could Emilia still be alive?

Callie paused, realizing that she was in a better position to get answers than she ever could have hoped for. Because the hotel Pam had booked them in, the hotel where Callie was staying, was the Albergo Annagiule. Emilia's hotel. She would be meeting Emilia in person in just a few hours.

When the announcement came that her flight was boarding, Callie hurried to the gate. She could hardly wait to reach Italy.