reached out and held the old woman to her. It was Marcella, her grandmother's last remaining servant in Venice … and now suddenly she was here … at their old house in Rome. The old woman and the young one stood there, holding tightly to each other for what seemed like forever, unable to let go of each other, or the memories they shared. They stood there together, for a very long time.
“Bambino …ah, Dio … bambino mia … ma che fai? What are you doing here?”
“How did she die?” It was all Serena could think of as she clung to the old woman.
“In her sleep.” Marcella sniffed deeply and stood back to get a good look at Serena. “She was getting so old.” She gazed into Serena's eyes and shook her head. It was remarkable how much the girl looked like her mother. For a moment, as she had stood there in the street, watching her, Marcella had thought she was seeing a ghost.
“Why didn't anyone tell me?”
Marcella shrugged in embarrassment and then looked away. “I thought he … that your uncle … but he didn't have time before …” She realized something then. Serena knew nothing at all of what had happened since her grandmother's death. “No one wrote to you, cara?”
“Nessuno.” No one. And then, gently, “Why didn't you?”
This time the old woman looked at her squarely. The girl had a right to know why she hadn't written to her. “I couldn't.”
“Why?” Serena looked puzzled as they stood there in the lamplight.
Marcella smiled shyly. “I can't write, Serena … your grandmother always told me that I should learn, ma …” She shrugged in a helpless gesture as Serena smiled in answer.
“Va bene.” It's all right. But how easily said after two terror-filled years. How much anxiety she would have been spared if the old woman had at least been able to write and tell her of her grandmother's death. “And …” She hated to say his name, even now. “Sergio?”
There was a moment's pause and Marcella took a careful breath. “He's gone, Serena.”
“Where?” Her eyes searched the old woman's. She had come four thousand miles and two and a half years for this news. “Where is he?”
“Dead.”
“Sergio?” This time Serena looked, shocked. “Why?” For an instant there was a flash of satisfaction. Perhaps in the end they had killed him too.
“I don't know all of it. He made terrible debts. He had to sell the house in Venice.” And then, almost apologetically, she waved at the white marble palazzo behind them. “He sold this … only two months after your grandmother died and he brought me back to Rome.” Her eyes sought Serena's then, looking for condemnation. She had come with Sergio, he who had betrayed her parents, whom even the principessa had come to hate. But she had come home to Rome with him. She had had nowhere else to go, Serena understood. Except for the elderly principessa, Marcella had been alone in the world. “I don't understand what happened. But they got angry with him. He drank. He was drunk all the time.” She looked knowingly at Serena. He had had good reason to be drunk all the time. He had had a lot to live with, the murder of his own brother, his brother's wife.… “He borrowed money from bad people, I think. They came here, to the palazzo, late at night. They shouted at him. He shouted back. And then … II Duce's men came here too. They were angry at him too … perhaps because of the other men. I don't know. One night I heard them threatening to kill him.…”
“And they did?” Serena's eyes lit up with an ugly fire. Perhaps he had come by his just deserts after all.
“No.” Marcella shook her head. Her voice was without pity in the summer night. “He killed himself, Serena. He shot himself in the garden, two months after the principessa died. He had no money left, he had nothing. Only debts. The lawyers told me that it took everything, the money from both houses and everything else, to pay his debts.” Then there was nothing left. It didn't matter. She hadn't come home for that.
“And the house?” Serena looked at her strangely. “Who does it belong to now?”
“I don't know. People I have never seen. They rent it to the Americans now since the end of the war. Before that, it was empty. I was here by myself. Every month the lawyer brings