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The church was gorgeous, with rice and confetti between the stones outside. There must have been a wedding recently, but apart from that there was nothing. No answers here.
He could hardly ask the lady passing with her dog for directions to the local brothel! Or could he? For that was where Dante’s mother had worked, he remembered.
Julius thought of how cross Beatrice had been with her little wild friend who’d swum in the river and roamed the cemetery, so he wandered there, opening the latch, grateful for the shade and the soft silence.
He saw all the family plots, including the Schininàs, but there were no Festas, of course.
No wonder she had been so jealous of those earrings...those little pieces of gold her friend’s mother had left.
But her mother must have been terrified, even if Beatrice was convinced she had felt nothing.
Then a spray of frangipani caught his eye. Placed on a single grave, away from the others. No, not a spray, but a wedding bouquet, the waxy flowers yellowing at the edges.
Schininà.
He looked at the dates and the inscription and wondered if this was Dante’s mother. Carmella had been buried away from the rest of her family, it would seem.
He moved the bouquet, its scent still lingering as he lifted it, and saw the names on the little tag that held the bouquet together.
Dante and Alicia
Beatrice had been here just a couple of weeks ago.
A breath away from finding her friend.
‘Best left,’Beatrice had said.
Had she been protecting her mother by not asking around? Surely she could have found her friend if she really cared? It had taken him mere minutes...
Instead Beatrice had changed her name, cut herself off from the one person she had ever loved...
Taylor... Tailor...
He thought back to his hated Latin.I cut.
Her new name was no accident.
He replaced the bouquet and walked up to the convent. He looked at the little school attached to it, and could not fathom cutting himself off from his sister or brother.
They’d argued, they’d rowed, but he would kill for them...
Marry for them?
Julius soon found what he was looking for—an iron door in the wall, beneath it an inscription with the name of its benefactor.
The baby door.
At home the convent had a wheel, but here it was a door.
He pulled it open and peered inside, and he was certain that Beatrice must have done the same.
A part of him wished there had been time to tell her more of what he knew from his visits to Di Dio Bellanisiá; that there he had met families and heard of their pain and endless guilt...
‘Signor?’
He turned and looked down at a nun.
‘It’s not a toy,’ she scolded.
