“For what?” Anina looked around. “Do you have somewhere to go?”
Matelda wished she did. Her heart was racing. Frustration, the jet fuel of anxiety, welled within her. She could see the future. She would die; the children would gather around this table. Her daughter, Nicolina, would sort through the contents. Her son, Matteo, would sit back; when his sister was done, he would rummage through the case. Her children would have, at best, a sketchy knowledge of the history behind the pieces. Without facts, there was no meaning behind them; without meaning, there would be no value. They would have no recourse except to sell the collection to the highest bidder. The stones would be plucked from their settings; the gold would be weighed, parceled, and melted down to be repurposed. The pieces that remained intact would be salvaged to sell as vintage collectibles on one of those websites that wealthy people peruse because they have nothing better to do than acquire more stuff. Matelda’s stomach churned.
“Nonna, are you all right? Seriously. You look terrible.” Anina went into the kitchen.
Matelda took a moment to collect herself. When a housewife grew old, her final task was to imagine what would endure of her life’s work after she was gone. The mother shaped the mission of the family, and if she failed, the family failed with her. Matelda had a hunch she wouldn’t like what her children would do once she was gone, but she had no one to blame but herself. She had given up too easily. She had not shared the truth and made her family history a priority. Matelda had not taken her children to the place she was born and shared the story of her father. A vacation in Montenegro was more important than a trip to Scotland. But Matelda had her reasons. There were limits to what she knew about her father, but that was no excuse. Her children and grandchildren needed to know certain facts before Matelda forgot them entirely or died suddenly. A bird didn’t have to drop out of the sky to deliver that message.
Anina returned with a glass of water. “Nonna. Drink this.”
Matelda slowly sipped the water. “Grazie.”
Anina picked up her great grandmother Domenica Cabrelli’s watch and held it to her ear.
“It hasn’t been wound in years,” Matelda admitted.
Anina studied the watch. The aventurine was different from the other gems in the case; it was not warm like the magenta rubies from India set in the birthday band. It was not soft, like the swirls of gold in the Capri coral. It did not catch light like a diamond. It was not Italian. The stone was dark green and brooding, mined in a country far from Italy, in a place where the dense roots of tall trees absorbed a steady season of monsoons followed by months of hot sun. The filigree and embossing were not Italianate in design either. The watch was the awkward beauty of the collection, the foreigner.
“I think it was an antique long before Bisnonna owned it,” Anina said. “It’s nineteenth-century for sure.”
“How do you know?”
“Nonno taught me how to read the markings.” Anina turned it over in her hand and showed Matelda. “The gold is stamped. There are other clues. The timepiece is not Swiss, not its face or its gears, typically used in Italian construction. It’s not German or French either. Where did it come from?”
Matelda did not answer her.
“Look. It’s engraved. There’s the D, then there’s an engraved ampersand and then the J. Who is the J?”
“I’m not ready to part with it.”
Anina placed the watch back into the case. “I always want what I can’t have.”
Matelda rested her face in her hand, as she often did when she needed to think. Her fingers grazed the cut on her cheek. The faint wound stung just enough to remind her that she was hurting.
Outside, the late-winter day split open with a drumroll of thunder followed by flashes of lightning.
“Uh-oh.” Anina turned to the terrace doors. “Squall moving in!”
A heavy, cold rain began to fall, pummeling the terrazzo floor on the terrace like silver arrows.
“The bedroom windows!” Matelda cried.
“I’ve got them!” Anina jumped up and ran up the steps to her grandparents’ bedroom.
Matelda pulled the electrical plugs of the appliances in the living room in case the storm caused a power surge. Beppe barked and ran around in a circle in the excitement as Matelda pulled the emergency lamp off the shelf.
“You’re all set.” Anina sat down, breathless. “Closed them all. You’re the only person I know who keeps their windows open in the winter.”
“My mother taught me to open the windows in the morning to let out the bad spirits. I forget to close them.”
“Was your mother a strega?”
“I don’t think so.”
“So how did she know all that stuff?”
“Domenica Cabrelli was one of those wisewomen. She had common sense, but she acknowledged the spirit world. She also respected science. The neighbors called her before they called the doctor.” Beppe jumped up and sat on Matelda’s lap.
“I’d like to know about her.”
“My mother was born in this house; ninety-three years later she died in it. She lived in Viareggio all her life except when she was a young nurse and had to leave her family for a while.”
“Why did she leave?”
“Look. The sea is wild. This is the big storm they promised us.”
“Nonna, I want to know why my great-grandmother left the village. I’m getting married. I want my children to know about their ancestors.”
A stripe of orange light rested on the horizon, illuminating the churn of the surf as the storm took hold. The Ligurian Sea had a story too. Anina would soon find out where the sea had taken Domenica Cabrelli before it swept her away, along with her true love and their secret.
CHAPTER 4
Viareggio
1920