Chapter 24

TWENTY-FOUR

MAY 2019

Wednesday

Back inside the museum, Tori closed her eyes and took a deep breath to reorient herself and put the conversation with Jeremy behind her. She couldn't afford to let the day slip by as she thought about how much she missed him, and how encouraging and loving he'd been on the phone.

When she opened her eyes, Emilio was at the security post by the information desk. She rushed over.

"Emilio! I'm so relieved to see you," she exclaimed when she reached him. "I was looking all over."

"And I'm relieved to see you ," he said. He looked around surreptitiously and then lowered his voice. "You have something to… return, yes?"

She nodded.

"If you want to give it to me, I can return it for you. I'm here overnight tonight, so it will be easy. Just tell me where it goes…"

"No, no," she said. "I want to return it. Because I want to go back in. I have more boxes to go through. "

"How many more?"

"Not many. Well, kind of a lot. But I can work fast."

"And you can get through them today?"

"I'll try."

He sighed. "My friend, you are putting me in a very difficult position. Yesterday… well, I couldn't say no, you came all this way. But to keep letting you in… I'll lose my job, or worse…"

"Just this once. Once more. I can't go home without going through the other boxes. I don't know how to find my grandmother yet, and I can't leave thinking she's done something terrible. Remember what you said, secrets are how we know people? I need to find more of her secrets."

"Ah, yes. You use my words against me." He chuckled and shook his head. "Okay. Meet me like yesterday. We will do it once more."

She wanted to hug him, but she didn't know him well enough to do that, even though she felt as though they'd known each other for years. He was a friend, a co-conspirator. So she touched his elbow lightly with gratitude and then ran off.

She spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through the galleries, glad that there was still so much more to take in. At four fifty, she went to the lobby and found him. As he'd done yesterday, he waited until the lobby was empty, then led her down the hallway and unlocked the glass door to the archives.

He pulled on her elbow before she could enter. "Remember," he said. "Tonight I'm here overnight, so I won't be meeting you to go to the boat. Keep your eye on the time. Don't forget to get out of here and down to the dock by six for the employees' ferry. Give yourself plenty of time to get down the steps, okay?"

"I will. And thank you," she said.

"I'll see you tomorrow to see how you did."

"Yes," she said. "I'll find you at the hotel."

She smiled and hurried inside the room, passing the tables and chairs and making her way to the tall shelving units in the back. Reaching the "Ciani" aisles, she found the box from yesterday. She took it off the shelf and placed it on the floor, trying again to pull back the tape carefully so she could close it up again as best she could. She pulled Pietro's notebook from her bag, and slipped it inside the box under the lamps and vase, exactly where she'd found it.

Pushing the box back into its place on the shelf, she pulled out the one next to it. It was very light, much lighter than the first box. She set it down and unsealed it as carefully as she'd unsealed the first one yesterday. She pulled back the flaps.

Inside was a stack of garments and fabric pieces, along with trims and sewing notions—a bag of ribbons, a box of buttons, a circular, bright red pincushion, a set of pinking shears. She pushed those items aside and reached in deeper, then pulled out a dress—a frilly yellow one with big pockets in front outlined with white ribbon. Beneath it were two sets of linen shorts, sized for a child or young teen. She dug in further and pulled out more garments—a white sleeveless cotton blouse sized for a woman and three pretty cotton sweaters with pearl-shaped buttons. Below those was a woman's skirt with a small, floral pattern, the underskirt made of tulle, which gave the garment form and movement. The style of the skirt looked familiar, as though it had a kind of signature—as though it was made by a designer whose work she was familiar with. And that's when it hit her: Marilene had said that Giulia made the family's clothing. These had to be some of the clothes she'd made.

Tori hugged the skirt to her chest, breathing in deeply as though she could pick up even a faint scent of her grandmother. But the skirt merely smelled musty. Still, she reminded herself, Giulia had sewn these clothes for herself and for Marilene and Marilene's family. She'd touched these fabrics that Tori was touching now. She shivered, even though the room was warm.

Then she reached into the box again and pulled out a girl's red dress. It had the same construction as the floral skirt, with a wide shape and a flouncy appearance. But there was something different about this dress, compared to the floral skirt. It was… heavy, in a way. Bottom-heavy. As though the hem was weighted.

Tori laid the dress on a table and moved the upper layers around, then felt the hem of the inner layer. And sure enough, there was a line of small, solid objects inside. She'd heard that sometimes designers sewed coins into the hems of dresses to keep them from flying up in the wind. And she'd seen "dress weights" online—dense plastic bits you can apply with adhesive to the hem of a dress, to serve the same purpose. She'd occasionally considered using them if one of her bridal clients was planning a beachside wedding, where there was sure to be a good breeze. But these objects were different. They felt like little bits of hardware. Curious as to what these items were and why Giulia would have sewn them in, she carefully ripped a few stitches in the hem of the underskirt with her fingers. She reached inside the folds to pull the object out.

It was cylindrical, about an inch in length, and it looked like brass. The top was rounded, almost like the tip of a lipstick once it's been used a few times. The bottom had the word Corto stamped in, with thick lettering.

She had never seen one before, but she was pretty sure it was a bullet.

"Tell me you didn't steal something else," Emilio said, looking at her across the small, round table. "Tori, I am starting to worry about you."

"I didn't steal it," she said. "I'm going to put it back. But I had to show you."

They were seated at one of the busy cafés on the piazza the next morning, two cups of cappuccino and a basket of cornetti in front of them. Tori had made it down to the dock yesterday evening in time to catch the employees' ferry, but just barely. She'd been so busy staring at the bullet that she hadn't kept track of the quickly passing minutes. At five fifty, she'd snapped to attention, pushed the box back into its spot, and rushed out of the room, through the front entrance of the museum, and down the stone stairway. Fortunately it had started to drizzle, so the employees took more time boarding the boat, keeping their footsteps small so as not to slip and slide. That gave her a few precious extra minutes to reach the dock.

She'd called home last night to check in and was glad the conversations with Marilene and Molly were fairly routine, because she was distracted by what she'd found. For a moment, she considered telling Marilene about the bullets, but then changed her mind. She remembered how upset Marilene had become the night she'd first seen the wedding dress on Kelly's postcard, and she didn't want to risk upsetting her that way once again. She didn't want Molly to have to try to help Marilene calm down. It wouldn't be right to now mention the bullets or what she'd read in Marilene's father's notebook. No, it was better to get as much of the real story as she could, and then share it with Marilene when she returned home.

Still, she'd barely slept last night, wondering why Giulia would have sewn bullets into Marilene's dresses. Was Marilene headed somewhere dangerous? But what could Giulia have expected the young Marilene to do with those bullets?

And did this have anything to do with the betrayal mentioned in Pietro's notebook?

Tori had come down to the dock first thing that morning, hoping to catch Emilio the minute he returned after his overnight shift. She'd stayed about an hour, watching three ferries come in without spotting Emilio.

Frustrated, she'd taken a walk to the piazza and soon found herself among the shops, browsing the outdoor racks lined with colorful sundresses, straw hats, floral scarves, and little souvenirs like key chains and picture frames. She reached Gabriella and Francisco's bookstore and decided to stop in. It was beautiful, as Emilio had described it, and the brother-and-sister pair was there. They recognized her immediately and were as gracious and warm as they'd been when she'd had dinner with them on her first night in Anzalea. The store carried a substantial collection of Italian-authored books in English translation, and she bought six novels that Gabriella recommended—three romances that she thought Marilene would like and three young-adult fantasies for Molly. She also bought a beautiful book by a local photographer, with stunning photographs of Anzalea at dusk and in the morning, and of the castle as seen on the dock near the piazza. She was glad to find it as she was quickly falling in love with Anzalea. Gabriella offered to have the presents gift-wrapped, and said she'd drop them off at the hotel that afternoon.

"Say hello to Emilio for me," Gabriella said. "We must all have dinner again before you go." She was certain she saw Gabriella blush slightly as she mentioned Emilio's name.

Walking back to the piazza, Tori searched the café patios once again, hoping to see Emilio. She spotted him at one of the places, having coffee with a group of friends. And she rushed over to his table. He invited her to sit with them, and she waited impatiently as they finished their breakfast. Evidently sensing that she had something on her mind, Emilio had bid " Arrivederci " to the group and then ordered more coffee and the cornetti for her.

She looked around, not wanting anyone to pay attention to what she was about to display. When she was convinced that everyone at the nearby tables was involved in their own conversations, she pulled the bullet out of her bag. She put it on the table, her hand hiding it from any other pairs of eyes, and slid it toward him. She removed her hand.

His eyes widened, and she could tell he was as surprised as she'd been. " Cavolo! " he exclaimed, and she figured that was an expression of surprise. "This is a bullet!"

"I know, right?"

He pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket and put them on, then picked up the bullet and studied it, turning it over again and again.

"Where did you find this?" he asked.

"It was sewn into the hem of a child's dress in one of the boxes I found yesterday. I think it had to be one of Marilene's dresses when she was little. Marilene told me that Giulia sewed all her dresses when they lived on the island."

"They were sewn into her dress?" he asked, shocked.

"Yes, a red party dress. There were several bullets, all inside the hem. They were sewn in so carefully and securely, I don't think anyone would have noticed who wasn't a dressmaker. But I knew there was something unusual about the weight of this dress. It was heavier than it should have been."

Emilio studied the cylinder and then read the inscription along the bottom rim. "Corto," he said.

"What is that?"

"It's the manufacturer. Yes, I know about these bullets. They were used widely during the war years, by police largely, but also by the German and Italian armies. There's a whole section about it in the museum, down in the basement. And there was a black market for them. A lot were bought and sold illegally."

"But why would Giulia have been sewing bullets into a dress? To protect Marilene in some way?"

"Maybe she was smuggling them somewhere," Emilio suggested.

"Do you… do you think this has something to do with what Marilene's father wrote in the notebook?" she asked. "The betrayal he described?"

"In what way?"

"Could she have been trying to kill someone? Him, even?"

Emilio considered this. "I don't know. But there is another possibility, my friend. Perhaps your grandmother was part of the Resistance."

Tori looked at him, stunned. "She was… what does that even mean?"

"Some of these smaller islands, they were involved in the Resistance. In the same way that Signora Russo was sending messages to the Americans from Parissi Island, many Italians were also trying to undermine the Nazis to give the Allied forces a hand in moving northward. There was a big attack by the Resistance in March of 1944—an explosion on the Spanish Steps in Rome, where the Nazi police force was stationed. Many Nazi soldiers were killed. In the end, the Resistance paid for it dearly—the Germans set out to kill ten Italians for every German policeman killed. They killed even more, in the end. It was called the Ardentine Caves massacre."

"How horrible," Tori said, shaking her head. "I never knew any of this."

"Many Resistance fighters put their lives in danger to try to end the German occupation," Emilio continued. "It's remarkable what they were able to accomplish. And they depended on a steady stream of ammunition coming their way. That explosion on the Spanish Steps—in that case, the individual planting the explosive was a twenty-two-year-old man who disguised himself as a sanitation worker. Rosario Bentivegna, his name was. But for every Bentivegna, there was a host of others working quietly behind the scenes, ferrying supplies and messages and weapons. Maybe even your grandmother."

"But if she was smuggling bullets, why would Marilene's father have said she betrayed him? Marilene said he was a fierce anti-Fascist. That's why he moved his family out of Rome. He and Giulia would have been on the same side."

"I don't know," Emilio said. "Perhaps the betrayal wasn't political, then. Perhaps it was personal."

"That doesn't make sense either," Tori said. "Giulia had a good relationship with Marilene's family. She wouldn't have wanted to kill Pietro. I guess she did do something that angered him according to the notebook. But even then, why sew the bullets into a dress?"

She put her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand. "I don't know what to think."

Emilio sipped his coffee, then placed the cup down and looked out toward the castle. "I believe there's one thing that's certain," he said. "Your grandmother was much more than a dressmaker. She was a complex woman. Maybe that's the most that can ever be said."

Tori breathed in. Emilio was right. Giulia was complex. But Tori had never let complexity scare her. She had been surrounded by complex women all her life. And not only her mother and Marilene. All the brides who came to her in pursuit of the perfect wedding gown—they were complex, too. And fabrics were complex—the way they draped or floated or swirled or tapered, the way they formed pleats or folds or shirring, the way they could accentuate or play down the curves and angles of the body. This was the language that textiles spoke. And she had learned how to decode that language. And how to find the order within it.

Giulia had been the same way. Giulia had understood fabrics. That was why she could so skillfully hide the bullets within the hem. And Tori was Giulia's granddaughter. She possessed the same spirit. The same drive. And the same analytical mind.

"Yes, she was," Tori said. "But not too complex for me. I'm telling you, Emilio. I'm going to figure out what all this means—the bullets, the betrayal, and Giulia's whereabouts."

She picked up the bullet from the table and held it between her thumb and forefinger. "This isn't going to stop me," she said. "It only makes me even more determined to know the truth."