“Why are you so sad?” Eva asked, pulling her knees up under her long nightgown. She’d found Angelo watching the storm in her father’s library, the doors opened to the balcony, the rain falling heavily onto the pink flagstones below. She didn’t think he would answer. He hadn’t answered her yet. He had been living in their villa with his nonno and nonna for three months, and Eva had done everything in her power to make him her friend. She had played the violin for him. She had danced for him. She had splashed in the fountain in her school uniform and gotten scolded just to make him laugh. He did laugh sometimes. And that kept her trying harder. But he’d never talked to her.
“I miss my mother.”
Eva’s heart lurched in surprise. He was talking to her. In Italian. Eva knew Angelo understood when he was spoken to, but she had expected him to speak in English, like an American.
“I don’t remember my mother. She died when I was four,” she said, hoping he would say something else.
“You don’t remember anything?” he asked.
“My father has told me some things. My mother was Austrian, not Italian like my babbo. Her name was Adele Adler. Beautiful name, isn’t it? I write it sometimes in my very best penmanship. Her name sounds like an American film star. She even looked like one a little. My father says it was love at first sight.” She was babbling, but Angelo was looking at her with interest, so she didn’t stop.
“The first time my babbo saw my mamma, he was in Vienna on business, selling his wine bottles. Babbo has a glass company, you know. He sells his bottles to all the wineries. Austria has very good wine. Babbo has let me taste it.” She thought Angelo should know how sophisticated she was.
“Did she play the violin too?” Angelo asked hesitantly.
“No. Mamma wasn’t musical. But she wanted me to be a great violinist just like my grandfather Adler. He is very famous. Or so Uncle Felix says.” She shrugged. “Tell me about your mother.”
He was silent for several seconds, and Eva thought he was going to revert to silence once again.
“Her hair was dark like yours,” he whispered. He reached out slowly and touched her hair. Eva held her breath as he fingered a long curl and then dropped his hand.
“What color were her eyes?” she asked gently.
“Brown . . . like yours too.”
“Was she beautiful like me?” This was asked without guile, for Eva had always been told how beautiful she was and accepted it with a shrug.
The boy tipped his head to the side and reflected on this. “I suppose. To me she was. And she was soft.” He said the word in English, and Eva wrinkled her nose at this, not sure she understood. “Soft? Soffice o grassa?”
“No. Not grassa. Not fat. Everything about her comforted me. She was . . . soft.” The answer was so wise, so specific, so old, that she could only stare.
“But . . . your nonna is soft too,” she offered eventually, trying to find something, anything, to say.
“Not in the same way. Nonna fusses. She tries to make me happy. Nonna wants to give me love. But it isn’t the same. Mamma was love. And she didn’t even have to try. She just . . . was.”
They sat watching the rain then, and Eva thought about mothers and lovely, soft things and the lonely way the rain made her feel, even though she wasn’t alone.
“Do you want to be my brother, Angelo? I don’t have a brother. I would like one very much,” she said, her gaze tracing his profile.
“I have a sister,” Angelo whispered, not answering her, not looking away from the rain. “She is still in America. She was born . . . and my mamma died. And now she is in America, and I am here.”
“Your father is there with her, though.”
He shook his head sadly. “He gave her to my aunt. She is my mamma’s sister. She wanted a baby.”
“She didn’t want you?” Eva asked, confused. Angelo shrugged as if it didn’t matter.
“What is her name . . . your baby sister?” Eva pressed.
“Papà named her Anna after Mamma.”
“You will see her again.”
Angelo turned his face toward her, and his eyes were more gray than blue in the shadow of the small lamp on Camillo’s desk.
“I don’t think I will. Papà said Italy is my home now. I don’t want Italy to be my home, Eva. I want my family.” His voice broke, and he looked down at his hands like he was ashamed at his weakness. It was the first time he had said her name, and Eva reached for his hand.
“I will be your family, Angelo. I will be a good sister. I promise. You can even call me Anna when we are alone if you want to.”
Angelo swallowed, his throat working, and his hand tightened around hers.
“I don’t want to call you Anna,” he said with a sob in his throat. He looked at Eva again, blinking away tears. “I don’t want to call you Anna, but I will be your brother.”
“You can be a Rosselli if you want to. Babbo wouldn’t mind.”
“I will be Angelo Rosselli Bianco.” He smiled at that and swiped at his nose.
“And I will be Batsheva Rosselli Bianco.”
“Batsheva?” It was Angelo’s turn to furrow his brow.
“Yes. It’s my name. But everyone just calls me Eva. It’s a Hebrew name,” she said proudly.
“Hebrew?”
“Yes. We are ebrei.”
“Ebrei?”
“We are Jews.”
“What does that mean?”
“I’m not sure, exactly.” She shrugged. “I don’t go to religious lessons at school. And I’m not Catholic. Most of my friends don’t know our prayers, and they don’t go to temple. Except my cousins Levi and Claudia. They are Jewish too.”
“You aren’t Catholic?” Angelo asked, shocked.
“No.”
“Do you believe in Jesus?”
“What do you mean, believe in him?”
“That he is God?”
Eva wrinkled her forehead. “No. I don’t think so. Jesus is not what we call him.”
“You don’t go to Mass?”
“No. We go to temple. But not very often,” she admitted. “My babbo says you don’t have to go to a synagogue to talk to God.”
“I went to a Catholic school and Mass every Sunday. Mamma and I always went to Mass.” Angelo hadn’t lost the shocked expression on his face. “I don’t know if I can be your brother, Eva.”
“Why?” she squeaked, perplexed.
“Because we aren’t the same religion.”
“Jews and Catholics can’t be brothers and sisters?”
Angelo was quiet, contemplative. “I don’t know,” he admitted finally.
“I think they can,” she said firmly. “Babbo and Uncle Augusto are brothers, and they don’t agree on very much.”
“Well, then. We will agree on everything else,” Angelo said gravely. “To make up for it.”
Eva nodded, just as solemnly. “Everything else.”
“Why are you always arguing with me?” Angelo sighed, throwing his hands in the air.
“I’m not always arguing with you!” Eva argued.
Angelo just rolled his eyes and tried to shake his persistent shadow. She followed him everywhere, and he usually didn’t mind, but he’d spent the morning teaching her to play baseball—nobody in Italy played baseball—and now his leg was bothering him. He wanted Eva to go away so he could attend to it.
“So, what exactly is wrong with your leg?” Eva asked, noticing his discomfort. She’d already taught Angelo the basics of soccer, and though Angelo couldn’t run very well, he could protect and defend. He was a superb goalie. Still, as much time as they’d spent playing together, he hadn’t ever talked about his leg, and she’d been surprisingly patient, waiting for him to reveal the secret. She was tired of waiting.
“There’s nothing wrong with it . . . exactly. It just isn’t all there.”
Eva sucked in her breath in horror. A missing leg was so much worse than she had imagined.
“Can I see?” she begged.
“Why?” Angelo shifted uncomfortably.
“Because I’ve never seen a missing leg.”
“Well, that’s the problem. You can’t see what isn’t there.”
Eva sighed in exasperation. “I want to see the part that is there.”
“I would have to take off my trousers,” he challenged, trying to shock her.