Chapter 30

THIRTY

MAY 2019

Friday

Tori decided to spend the last few days of her trip at the home of her grandparents. As lunch was drawing to a close, she mentioned that her bags were still in Anzalea, but Giulia said that was no problem as her closets were filled with garments.

"Don't forget, I'm a dressmaker," she said.

Emilio and Vincenzo left after lunch, and Tori wasted no time in getting to know her grandmother. There was so much to talk about—the war, the bullets, Pietro's notebook, and the meaning of the words "Wherever you go" on the paper she'd found. But they'd get to all that later. For now, she wanted to talk about the most important topic of all. And she brought it up as soon as she and Giulia were alone, as Luca walked Emilio and Vincenzo back to their car. She explained how troubled Olive's life had been, and the way she had drowned, which brought Giulia to tears.

"You thought your daughter was dead," Tori said. "And Marilene thought you were dead. That was the only thing, she said, that would have kept you away. But Emilio—he said the real story could be more complicated. And he was right."

Giulia wiped her tears with a handkerchief and went on to explain everything. How she'd been told right after her eighteenth birthday that her whole family had been murdered. How sad she was, and how much she wanted to feel less helpless. And how Luca felt the same, having seen his father killed after writing an anti-Fascist editorial. How she and Luca spent a month together on Ciani Island, trying to draw comfort from one another. How she came up with the idea to sew bullets into dresses to smuggle to the Resistance fighters operating in Rome. How Luca left to help organize a major attack on Nazi buildings in the occupied towns, and she was to meet him with the final box of altered garments.

"But then I found I was pregnant," she said. "I told Marilene's parents I had married Vincenzo before I arrived at their home. I couldn't tell them the truth, that it was Luca's baby. I was ashamed that we had been together. Marilene's father had seen the two of us growing close, and he'd tried to keep us apart. He thought that I would distract Luca from his work in the Resistance. He considered it a huge betrayal that we had fallen in love. But we couldn't help it. I couldn't stop it. And I couldn't be sorry."

Tori breathed in sharply. So this was it—the reason Pietro had written such angry words in his notebook. This was the betrayal he'd mentioned. Giulia and Luca falling in love—that's how Giulia had betrayed Pietro. Tori decided not to tell Giulia about the notebook. Her grandmother had been through so much and didn't need to be further upset by Pietro's harsh words.

"Marilene's father arranged for others to smuggle the garments with the bullets," Giulia continued and went on to explain that after Olive was born, she went to Rome to find Luca. And as she was connecting with some of the Resistance fighters to learn what had happened to Luca, she was told that everyone on Ciani Island was dead.

"I thought often about going back, but I couldn't bring myself to do it," she said. "I didn't think I could face that island, knowing what had happened while I was away. I wished that I had stayed, so that I would have been killed, too. I did go back, later on. When Olive would have been six. Before I'd even found Luca again, I went back, hoping to stop the hurt. But there were new owners there, and they had no idea what had happened to the Ciani family.

"They let me look around the house one last time," she said, speaking in just above a whisper. "And before I left, I went into what had been Luca's room. He had written a note to me years earlier, and I wrote the same thing now. It was something my father used to say, a sort of poem: ‘Wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you stay, I will stay.' I wrote it for Luca. And for Olive. And for Marilene and her family. And for the six million Jews who died. And all the others who died or suffered. I tucked it under the window seat in his room. I hoped someone who needed to find it, would."

Tori let out a shaky breath. "I found it," she said. "It was in one of the boxes at the museum. I was going to put it back, but I brought it to the hotel. It was in Italian so I had to translate it to understand it. And I knew you wrote it." And at that moment, she also remembered where she had first heard those words. Olive, her mother, used to chant them. Except she'd said them in a more formal way. A biblical way: Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God…

Giulia slowly rose and walked over to the window, which looked out to the flower boxes, drenched in sunlight.

"There is so much that doesn't make sense," she said. "Mistakes, misunderstandings. So much that could have been different. If I hadn't been told Olive was dead, I would have gone back to her long before she left with Marilene. But we cannot rewrite the past. War and genocide and brutality—they don't let go. They were my life then. They've been my life always.

"But my darling," she said. "I look at you and I think about your daughter, and I… can't help but think I have finally stumbled on… rightness. And peace. There was something else my father would say, something from his Jewish learning. Maybe a command, or maybe a plea. Choose life. Choose life. For so long, I didn't feel I could. But today, with you here, I'm finally able to."

Tori looked at her. "I'm not sure I know what that means."

"It means that I now have a connection with the generation that came next. After the nightmare. Tori, I became an adult during the war, and your mother was born during it. But you… you are the first generation to have no direct connection. You were born long after it was over. And darling, all of us who suffered and all of those who died—and I include your mother in that—we all stand behind you. Do it for us, if you can.

"Choose life, my love. Choose life."