was annoyed. Did the title mean so much, then? Was that what would make the difference? Why? It all seemed so unimportant now. Titles, names, rank, money. All that mattered to Serena was that her grandmother was dead.
He was whispering softly to himself as he shuffled through drawers of papers, and then checked a large ledger for what seemed like an interminable time, until at last, he nodded his head and looked up at Serena again. “Yes.” He turned the book toward her. “It is here. April ninth, 1943. The cause of death was natural. A priest from this church administered last rites. She is buried outside in the garden. Would you like to see?” Serena nodded and followed him solemnly out of the office, through the church, and out a narrow door, into a brightly sunlit little garden, filled with flowers and small ancient tombstones, and surrounded by small trees. He walked carefully toward a back corner where there were only a few tombstones, and all of them seemed to be new. He gestured gently toward the small white marble stone, watched Serena for a moment, and then turned and left as she stood there, looking stunned. The search was over, the answers had come. She was here, then, beneath the trees, hidden by the walls at Santa Maria dei Miracoli, she had been here all along as Serena wrote her letter after letter, praying that her grandmother was still alive. Serena wanted to be angry as she stood there, she wanted to hate someone, to fight back. But there was no one to hate, no fight left. It was all over, in this peaceful garden, and all that Serena felt was sad.
“Ciao, Nonna,” she whispered as she turned to leave at last, her eyes blurred with the tears that filled them. She did not return to say good-bye to the priest, but as she made her way out through the beautiful little church again, he was standing in the doorway and came to her, looking solicitous and interested, and he shook her hand twice as she left.
“Good-bye, Principessa … good-bye.…” Principessa? For an instant she stopped in her tracks, startled, and turned to look at him again. Princess, he had called her.… Princess? … And then slowly, she nodded. Her grandmother was gone now. Serena was the principessa, and as she ran hastily down the steps to the landing where she had left her gondolier, she knew that didn't matter at all.
As the gondolier made his way away from the church, her thoughts were spinning. Sergio. What had he done with the money he got for the house? What had he done with her parents' treasures and her grandmother's beautiful things? Suddenly she wanted an explanation, a recount, she wanted the despicable man who had destroyed her family to make up to her what he had taken from her. Yet even as she thought of it she knew that he could not. Nothing Sergio would ever do would make up to Serena what she had lost. But still, for some reason, she felt an urge now to see him, to demand something of him, to make him account for what was, in a sense, hers as well. And now as she sat in the gondola, heading slowly back toward the Grand Canal and the Piazza San Marco, she knew where she was going. Venice had belonged to her grandmother. It was a part of her. It was her. But it wasn't home to Serena. It never had been. It had always been foreign and different and intriguing, exciting, a kind of adventure even during the two years she had lived there after her parents death. But now, having come this far, Serena knew that she had to go further. She had to go all the way to her beginnings. She had to go home.
“Do you want to go to the piazza, signorina?”
“No.” She shook her head slowly. Not to the piazza. She had finished what she had to do in Venice. Three hours after she'd got there, it was time to move on. “No, grazie. Not the piazza. Take me back to Santa Lucia.”
They glided slowly under the Ponte dei Sospiri, the Bridge of Sighs, and she closed her eyes. Almost instinctively, the gondolier began to sing; it was a sad, plaintive song, and he sang it well. A moment later they were back in the bright sunshine and the song went on as they rounded the bend