Chapter 9

NINE

MAY 2019

Wednesday

Dinner was quiet that night. The only noises were the clink of silverware against plates, the muted sound of meatloaf being chewed, and the dull thwack of water glasses being set down on the table after having been lifted for a sip. Tori looked first at Marilene and then at Molly. Marilene's gaze was directed down toward her plate. Molly was glancing around the kitchen, first at the backyard-facing window, then at the ceiling, and then at the chunk of meatloaf on her fork. Her eyes met Tori's and she shrugged and turned back to the window. Tori continued eating, feeling the heaviness of the atmosphere with each bite.

She didn't exactly know what was wrong, but she supposed some of this was the aftermath of her turning down Jeremy's proposal. Although she hadn't discussed it further with either Molly or Marilene today, she knew they'd felt a seismic shift in the dynamics of the household. They were aware that Jeremy wasn't coming over tonight, that he wasn't planning any more ice cream outings for all of them, that there was no need to ask Tori if she'd be home for dinner this Tuesday or if she'd be having dinner at the club where Jeremy was playing. Even to Tori, the house felt too big for the three of them, and the table felt strangely empty. She knew that if Jeremy was gone for good, in time they'd all get over it. They were resilient adults, she and Marilene. And Molly was a busy sixth grader, with activities and friends and homework to complete, tests to study for, ballet classes and rehearsals to attend. This mood wasn't going to last.

"So… how was everyone's day?" she asked.

"Just fine, dear," Marilene said. Molly looked up, using her tongue to swipe some food out from between her back teeth and the inside of her cheek.

"Anything new?" Tori persisted.

"Mmm-mmm." Marilene shook her head.

"Any homework tonight?" she asked Molly.

"A little," Molly muttered.

"Need any help?"

"No. I can do it."

"Any decisions about the ballet casting?"

"She said she'd have the list next week," Molly said, sounding as though she didn't have the energy to say her teacher's name. As though there were simply too many syllables in Mademoiselle Diana.

Tori put down her fork, but neither Marilene nor Molly seemed to notice. She supposed she would have expected more of an effort, at least from Marilene, to make the mood around the table more cheerful. After all, Tori was on the verge of losing the man she loved, the man who had been a huge, steady part of her life for the last five years. She wondered if maybe Molly and Marilene were mad at her for saying no to Jeremy and refusing to move forward with something they both thought was right for her. And for them, too, for that matter. Or maybe they believed she was managing the situation well. She knew they both thought she was as strong as they came. She handled stress well, and without a lot of drama. Maybe they didn't want to drag her down when she was probably fine. That she had done what she wanted to do.

And yet, watching her grandmother and her daughter eat their dinner, Tori came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with the three of them. With the way they dealt with change. The way they didn't speak about things that affected them, things that mattered. And the more important the event, the more necessary it became to stay quiet. She had never seen Marilene as upset as she was last night. But here she was today, going about her normal routines as though last night's revelation had never taken place.

It was as though they didn't have it in them to confront and express emotions—anger, disappointment, frustration, sadness—in the way other people typically did. They let loose only when they were pushed beyond their ability to hold back. She'd seen Marilene get a bit teary, as she'd done last night, but she'd never seen her break down and cry. And she didn't think Marilene or Molly had ever seen her cry. She hadn't cried when her mother died, and she didn't remember Marilene crying either. She'd come close to breaking down when Jeremy had left her at the door after dinner last night; and her eyes had welled up earlier today when she'd thought about her mother. But in the end, she'd held herself together.

The question Jeremy had asked suddenly came back to haunt her: What was she scared of? More importantly, what were they all scared of? Was this the lesson that she and Marilene were teaching Molly—that when things got rough, when you couldn't exert control, you pulled back? Where had that lesson come from? And why did they cling to it so desperately, like a buoy in a turbulent ocean?

Did her mother's life have something to do with it? Or her still-inexplicable death?

When dinner was over, the three of them cleared the table and Marilene loaded the dishwasher, the only sound the water rushing from the faucet to rinse the plates and silverware. Molly went upstairs to finish her homework, and Marilene went to the living room to watch a little TV before bed.

"I'll come up in a little while to say goodnight, okay?" Tori called up to her daughter from the landing.

"Okay. Whatever," Molly said, her back to Tori as she climbed the last few steps.

"Is something wrong?"

Molly paused and turned around. "He asked you to marry him and you said no. And now he's gone, right?"

"I told you that's what happened."

"And I still don't get it. Why won't you just marry him?" Molly's tone was indifferent, but Tori could hear a slight edge of emotion coming through. She was glad Molly was speaking up and tried to answer in a way that wouldn't alienate her daughter.

"You don't just marry somebody, honey," she said. "It has to be right. And it's not now. It's not the right time. You're going to be a teenager soon, and I want to focus all my attention on you, instead of on starting a new married life?—"

"Oh, no," Molly said. "Don't blame me, it's not my fault?—"

"I'm not saying it's your fault. I'm explaining?—"

"Explaining why you keep doing the completely wrong thing," Molly said. "I like Jeremy. He was normal. Jeez, I wanted to have a normal family for once."

Tori stiffened. She didn't care so much for herself, but she worried that if Marilene were to hear Molly say such a thing, she would be quite hurt. Since last night, Tori's anger toward Marilene had softened a bit. She still felt she should have known the truth years ago; but she also recognized that Marilene had made a huge sacrifice, leaving her home and family to keep Olive with her.

"Honey, stop," she said. "You don't understand what you're saying?—"

"I know exactly what I'm saying," Molly told her. "I'm saying that this would be nice, you know? Something new. My friends all change. Their families change. They get new babies or new jobs or new houses. But we just keep going and going and going. You live in the house you grew up in. Isn't that… weird? I can't wait to get out of here, graduate high school and go to college and finally do something .

"I don't get it, Mom," she said as she turned her back on Tori. "I really don't."

Tori sighed. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Mol. Families are complicated…" But Molly was already upstairs. "I'll come up in a few minutes to say goodnight," she said again. Molly didn't respond.

Tori went to the hallway closet and pulled out Sheree's wedding gown, which she'd brought home from the store that afternoon. Taking it to the kitchen, she spread a cloth over the table to protect it and then pulled it out of the garment bag. Laying the bodice on the table, she sat down and adjusted the skirt so it draped onto her lap. Then she lifted the bottom part of the skirt and ran the existing hem between her thumb and the pads of her other fingers, trying to ascertain the intricacies of its weave, characteristics that were helpful to feel as well as see: texture, fluidity, weight. It was funny, she'd taken a few sewing classes when she was growing up and a few art and design classes in college, and she kept up with style columns on wedding blogs and social media. But she had never formally studied fashion. She'd just always had a knack for seeing the best combination of style and function when it came to fabrics. Most of her clients found her through word of mouth, and they were always surprised to learn she'd never had any formal training or apprenticeships. They often wondered where on earth her talent and skill had come from.

And now, it seemed she had an answer. Giulia . Her grandmother. Her biological grandmother. The one who had sewn a wedding dress now on display in an Italian museum. She likely hadn't had any kind of formal training either.

Did that kind of talent get handed down through the generations? Molly's teachers always said she was a fine artist. "You must get your talent from your mom," her art teacher, Mr. Rosen, had told her—and she'd repeated it to Tori and Marilene—a few weeks ago when she'd handed in a mixed-media collage. And other teachers had noted her strong hand-eye coordination, which made her good at sports. Her physical education teacher had mused during last year's teacher appreciation lunch that maybe the same hand-eye coordination that made Tori so good at fashioning garments was behind Molly's strong serve and wicked cross-court shots during the recent tennis unit. He suggested that she continue to play and then try out for the middle school tennis team when she started sixth grade in the fall.

Tori wondered what else could Giulia have handed down. A fierce need for control? An unwillingness to give in, even if that meant giving up the most wonderful man you'd ever met? Rock-solid stoicism?

Or were those things not passed along in one's DNA? Might they be passed down through example and through trauma? She thought now of one afternoon when she was eight and had gotten lost for a time in Bloomingdale's in the mall. The thing was, she hadn't thought she was lost at all. She and her mother had been standing in line for a table at the store's café, and she'd wandered off a few steps to look at a display of stuffed animals in the nearby toy department. She'd heard a commotion and come back to find her mother hysterical, her face red and her eyes open wide, the whites enormous. "No!" she screamed. "No! Where is she?" When she'd spied Tori, she'd stormed over and screamed, "Don't you ever, ever, ever do that again! Don't leave me, do you understand? Don't leave me!"

Tori hadn't understood what she'd done, but she'd been hugely embarrassed at the crowd that assembled to watch the scene play out. Her mom grabbed her hand and dragged her toward the elevator, as some soft laughter started to erupt among the onlookers. "My God, the way she was carrying on, I thought she'd lost a toddler or something," one said. "That was a big kid! And she was right over there!"

Her mom had sent her to her room for the rest of the day and threatened to ground her for even longer if she ever "pulled a stunt like that" again. Tori tried to explain that she hadn't meant to upset her mother, that she hadn't thought she was doing anything wrong; she'd simply been looking at the toys. She'd known exactly where her mother was the whole time. But her explanation made her mother even more unhinged. At home that night, she heard her mother carrying on to her father: "She just left! She just left! She never came back!"

Tori wanted to open the door and scream out, "I didn't leave! I didn't go anywhere! And of course, I came back! I was right there!" But she knew she'd anger her mother even more if she got involved in the conversation. She opened the door a crack and looked down the staircase, watching her parents on the living room sofa, her sweet father cradling her distraught mother in his arms as he kissed her head. She loved her mother so much. She was sweet and fun, the kind of mom who had pillow fights and made shadow puppets on the wall and told deliciously scary stories in the dark every Halloween, after taking Tori and her friends trick-or-treating around the neighborhood and then snuggling with Tori in bed, giving her a cup of seltzer to try to settle her stomach after eating too much candy. Seeing her mother so worked up that night, Tori made a promise to herself that she wouldn't scare her mother ever again. That she'd always stay right by her mother's side and do exactly what her mother wanted. That she'd never again give her mother cause to worry .

Thinking back now, Tori knew that was a hard task that would have become impossible. How could Tori have stayed in her mother's sight or been constantly in touch with her mother as a teenager, especially in those long-ago days before cell phones? Wouldn't she have rebelled? Wouldn't she have wanted to stay out with her friends, go to parties, go on dates? Would her mother have let her take the train to New York City with her friends, as all the high school kids did and all the middle school kids dreamed of doing? Would she even have allowed Tori to learn to drive? What kinds of fights would have been in store for the two of them? What lengths would Tori have gone to, wanting only to get her mother off her back and fit in with the other, "normal" kids who had "normal" parents?

In the end, Tori never had to face those questions. Her father had died when she was ten, and Marilene had given up her apartment and moved in with Tori and her mother. The next summer, her mother died, too—a freak accident that Tori couldn't bear to think about. In later years, she'd come to think her mother's death had been a blessing. Her poor mother had been so tortured, so frightened in a way Tori never understood. It often seemed that she couldn't live in her own skin, except when she was drinking. The fits and the tantrums were constant. In the days after the funeral, Marilene had assured Tori that her mother was finally at peace. That was a comfort.

" She just left! " her mother had shouted that night they came back from Bloomingdale's. Tori stayed in her room with nothing to eat until her father brought her a sandwich after dark. " She never came back! "

I did come back! Tori had wanted to shout. I never left!

But now she wondered if her mother hadn't been talking about her at all. Maybe Tori's momentary disappearance had triggered memories that were never more than barely beneath the surface. Maybe that night she'd been talking about her mother. The woman who left her behind. The woman who never came back. Giulia.

Was it possible that her mother had been so traumatized as a little girl by her mother's abandonment that she never could recover? Had Giulia ruined her daughter's life, and had her actions ultimately left Tori motherless, too? Had she rendered both Olive and Tori unable to fully embrace the wonderful feelings that made life worth living? Joy? Ease of spirit? Trust? And, in Tori's case, love? How could Giulia have made that her legacy?

Tori asked herself the question again as she studied the hem on Sheree's dress. Because it still didn't make sense, what Giulia had done. If she'd settled comfortably in Rome after the war, as the museum's website stated, that meant she was alive and well all those years that Marilene and Olive waited for her on the family's island, and all those years after they'd left for New York. How could she have stayed in Rome?

Exhausted and spent, Tori returned the gown to the garment bag, then hung it in the hall closet. It was after nine thirty now. She'd been sitting in the kitchen for an hour and hadn't even made a cut or sewn a stitch. She realized that the TV wasn't playing anymore, and the living room was empty. Evidently, Marilene had gone upstairs to sleep. Tori went to Molly's room and gave a quick knock on the door, then stepped inside. Molly was in bed, the covers tucked around her chin, as she gave Albie, who was stretched out beside her, a belly rub. Her table lamp was on and her school tablet was next to her.

"Honey, time to go to sleep," Tori said.

Molly nodded. "I will. I'm almost done." She gave Albie a kiss on his head.

"Onto your bed, Albie," Tori said, and he gathered himself up and jumped off Molly's bed, then scampered to his dog bed on the other side of the room.

Tori sat next to her daughter and stroked her long hair .

"Mom, why don't you marry him?" Molly said. "I don't understand. We're all sad without him. What's the big deal? I'm okay with it. Why aren't you?"

Tori shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I don't understand either." She kissed Molly's cheek, then rose and went to the door. "I really don't, honey," she said as she left the room. "I don't understand myself at all anymore."

The next morning when she awoke, her phone screen signaled that she'd received an email overnight. Opening the mail app, she saw that it was from the director of the Italian museum.

Dear Ms. Coleman,

Unfortunately, I have no way to know who the commenter is or how to find that individual. We were surprised, as you were, to learn that Giulia Sancino may still be alive. We've tried often to locate her with no luck. The best I could suggest for you is to come here and search through our archives. We allow access to members of the public with serious research interests. We have much material from the war years that was donated by the owners of the surrounding islands, but sadly we do not have enough staff to identify and catalog all the items. Perhaps you might find some clues and enlighten us as well. I am sure you would enjoy our beautiful museum.

Cordially,

Francesco Mansirio

Direttore, Museo del Castello di Parissi

Pushing away her phone, Tori sighed, disappointed. His note wasn't helpful. Was she really supposed to leave her family and her work and travel to a remote island off the coast of Italy to pore through some old documents in the faint hope that she'd uncover some random information that could lead her to Giulia?

And she hadn't heard anything from the commenter. Maybe she never would.

It wasn't practical to go, she told herself. How could she drop everything to take on this fool's errand? But on the other hand, knowing she might possibly get the answer she sought directly from Giulia—the answer that would explain what had happened, the answer that might provide the level of clarity that she, Marilene, and Molly so badly needed to navigate their future… how could she not?