me my money. They wanted me to stay, to see that everything is all right. Once, the Germans almost took it over, but they never did.” She shrugged, looking embarrassed again. Serena had lost everything, and yet Marcella was still living here. How odd life was.
“And the Americans live here now?”
“Not yet. Until now they only worked here. Now … next week … they will move in. Before, they only used it for offices, but they came yesterday to tell me they will move in on Tuesday.” She shrugged, looking like the Marcella that Serena had known as a child. “For me, it makes no difference, they have all of their own people. And they told me yesterday that they will hire two girls to help me. So for me it changes nothing. Serena?” The old woman watched her closely. “E tu? Vai bene? What happened in all those years? You stayed with the nuns?”
“I did.” She nodded slowly. “And I waited to come back.”
“And now? Where are you staying?” Her eyes glanced down at the suitcase Serena had dropped at her feet. But Serena shrugged.
“It doesn't matter.” She suddenly felt oddly, strangely, free, fettered to no place, no person, and no time. In the last twelve hours every tie that she had ever clung to had been severed. She was on her own now, and she knew that she would survive. “I was going to find a hotel, but I wanted to come here first. Just to see it.”
Marcella searched her face, and then hung her head as tears filled her eyes again. “Principessa …” It was a word spoken so softly that Serena barely heard it, and when she did, it sent a gentle tremor up her spine. The very word conjured up the lost image of her grandmother … Principessa.… She felt a wave of loneliness wash over her again, as Marcella lifted her face and dried her eyes on the apron that she eternally wore, even now. She clung to Serena's hand then, and Serena gently touched it with her own. “All these years I am here … with your grandmother, and then here, in this house.” She waved vaguely toward the imposing building behind Serena. “I am here. In the palazzo. And you” —she waved disparagingly at the dismal little suitcase—”like a beggar child, in rags, looking for a hotel. No!” She said it emphatically, almost with anger as the corpulent body shook. “No! You do not go to a hotel!”
“What do you suggest, Marcella?” Serena smiled gently. It was a voice and an expression on the old woman that she recognized from a dozen years before. “Are you suggesting that I move in with the Americans?”
“Pazza, va!” She grinned. Crazy! “Not with the Americans. With me. Ècco.” As she spoke the last word she snatched the suitcase from the ground, took Serena's hand more firmly in her own, and began to walk toward the palazzo, but Serena stood where she was and shook her head.
“I can't.” They stood there for a moment, neither moving, and Marcella searched the young girl's eyes. She knew all that she was thinking. She had had her own nightmares to overcome when she had first returned to Rome after the old lady's death. At first all she could remember here were the others … Umberto and Graziella … Serena as she had been, as a child … the other servants she had worked with, the butler she had once so desperately loved … Sergio when he had been younger and not yet rotten from within … the principessa in her prime.…
“You can stay with me, Serena. You must. You cannot be alone in Rome.” And then, more gently, “You belong here. In your father's house.”
She shook her head slowly, her eyes filling with tears. “It's not my father's house anymore.”
More gently still, “It is my home now. Will you not come home with me?” She saw in those deep green eyes the agony that had been there on the morning of the death of her father and knew that she was not speaking to the woman, but the child. “It's all right, Serena. Come, my love.… Marcella will take care of you … everything will be all right.” She enfolded Serena in her arms then, and they stood as they had in the beginning, holding tightly across the empty years. “Andiamo, cara.” And for no reason she could understand, Serena allowed herself to follow the old woman. She had