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“Don’t you think so, Sabella?” Sophie asks, tugging on my sleeve.
I look at her. She posed her two dolls on the kitchen table and is feeding them an imaginary dinner.
Giving myself an internal shake, I put bread rolls in a basket. “What was that, sweetheart?”
“Beatrice thinks she should stay.”
She means the new doll Angelo gave her. The beautiful porcelain doll will never replace the stick doll. As far as Sophie is concerned, that crudely made doll is more than sticks, rope, and cork. Beatrice has been Sophie’s only companion for years. To Sophie, Beatrice is as real as I am. Given Sophie’s loyal character, it’s only natural that she’d stay faithful to Beatrice. I hope Angelo realizes that. If he gave Sophie a pretty doll in the hope that it’ll replace the imaginary friend who shared all the hardships of her short life, he doesn’t understand his niece at all.
I smile. “That sounds like a clever decision.”
Sophie stares up at me. “What shall we call her?”
I caress her soft, wispy hair. “That’s for you to decide. What does Beatrice think?”
Sophie scrunches up her face as she considers the answer.
I fetch the soup from the stove and put the pot on the table, making sure the hot liquid is far out of her reach.
“How about Alison?” she asks with a cute little frown.
“Alison? Do you know someone called Alison?”
“No, silly.” Sophie giggles. “Alison is from a story. It’s one of the books Angelo gave me.”
I dish soup into her bowl. “I don’t recall that story, and I’m pretty sure we read them all.”
“It’s not here. It’s at Angelo’s house. Heidi showed me. There’s a big room with a dollhouse and tiny fairies on the windowsill and a cave right in the middle with a table and chairs.” She stretches her arms to the sides. “And a bookshelf this size full of books.”
Unease creeps up on me. “That sounds nice.”
“It’s very pretty, but I like my room here better.” She adds, “With you.”
“Let’s eat before the food gets cold.” I don’t show her how much her comment bothers me. My husband never said she could live here indefinitely, but I became attached to her. More than that, I don’t want her to harbor unrealistic expectations and be disappointed when things don’t work out the way she envisions. She’s Angelo’s family, and I don’t have a say in her future. “Alison must be hungry.”
“She just arrived from the city, and it was a very long journey.”
The grown-up way in which she says that makes my smile stretch. For a little girl who’s practically grown up wild and hasn’t attended school, her language skills never cease to amaze me. Unlike her brothers, she has no accent, a perfect pronunciation, and a vocabulary that’s advanced beyond her age. She’s clearly a very intelligent little girl.
Curious, I ask, “Besides your family, who else did you visit?”
“No one,” she says, turning her attention to the dolls.
I sense her clamming up. “I only ask because you’re so clever. I was wondering if someone taught you to speak English. It’s not even your first language.”
“No,” she says, her voice quiet. She picks Beatrice up and places her in front of Alison. Her lips move with a faint whisper as she imitates the dolls’ conversation.
“It’s not important.” I sit down and pick up my spoon. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
She continues to whisper, alternating between animating the two dolls. I’m dipping my spoon in my soup when she says so softly I have to strain my ears to hear, “I sometimes hide and listen to people.”
I pause. “In the village?”
She walks Alison across the table and shrugs. “Not this village. The one close to the camp. Sometimes, I sat behind the bushes by the shops or in the tree above the market. If I sat under the window of the school, I could hear what they said.”
“Would you like to go to school?”
“I guess.”
