Chapter 34
As Zaneta gently placed the missive back inside its leather cover, neither spoke.
Mira turned her head and stared out at the sea.
Pieces of the letter came back to her with a force that took her breath away.
Should there come a day when the byssus disappears or no more hands are left to weave its magical golden threads, nothing can erase the love I carry for you, or that my own mother carried for me.
Her whole life, Mira had shouldered the weight of centuries, as her mother reminded her again and again.
But Berenice’s words seemed to say their craft and calling had never been truly about the byssus itself.
Undeniably beautiful and singular, its gift was weaving community and closeness among women, especially during times when women had been valued only for their usefulness to the men they served.
For her, Mira saw, it had done just the opposite; her mother’s resting everything on the byssus drove them apart rather than creating the closeness she’d craved.
Mira’s mother finally broke the silence.
“I’ve heard pieces of her story over the years, but I didn’t know all of it.
Not like this. I’m going to have to read it again and again.
Her words carry so many lessons.” She stopped and looked at Mira, holding both her hands.
“I should have told you those things, too, figlia. You are strong and precious. Despite how harsh I may have been.”
Mira’s face crumpled, and she couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. She bowed her head and let them fall into the sand at her feet. “Thank you for saying that, Mamma.” They stood that way for a moment, and then, because affection and sentiment were awkward, Mira spoke.
“I can’t believe it survived all this time in that sea cave.”
“Why didn’t I look for the box?” Zaneta shook her head. “So many other things were lost, looted, and destroyed during that time that I never gave it a thought.”
Mira rose from the rock and offered her mother her hand. “Let’s walk back. The sea air probably isn’t the best condition for a two-thousand-year-old letter. I imagine Papà may need a rest from Daniella, too.”
Mira waited while Zaneta tucked the binding inside her vest and then helped her off the rock.
Seeing the cracks in her mother’s veneer, the buried emotions she’d long suppressed, opened a window for Mira to glimpse the woman her mother really was.
Mira found herself softening at her mother’s vulnerability, and for a moment, she could see beyond her own hurt to what she must have survived.
Mira was proud of her for that, grateful she’d endured.
She glanced out toward the horizon, and the swell of the waves brought a sudden sensation of dizziness.
Thoughts reeled in her head, and Mira imagined herself tumbling in the waves, buffeted like an empty shell.
How might her life have been different, she wondered, not for the first time.
What if she could turn back the clock to before the war, to a life where she knew her grandmother and aunts and where her mother could have been free of her dark moods and wounds?
Mira paused and looked over her shoulder as a diving bird broke the sea’s surface like an arrow.
She noticed her footprints trailing behind in the sand, parallel with her mother’s, tracks that seemed to chase them.
She thought about Daniella. What would her own daughter wish, someday, about her?
What might she wish Mira had set aside or freed herself from?
Would Daniella want to move to Milan or Florence, a landlocked city far from the sea?
Maybe weaving the byssus would seem too old-fashioned or simple a life for the more modern world she would grow up in.
Mira let that possibility settle on her heart for a moment like a bobber on a fishing line, feeling the ripples of emotion it created and seeing what sort of beasts it might snag lurking beneath the surface.
A faint surge of panic rose, but it dawned on her that it wasn’t because she felt panicked about what Daniella might become.
No, she knew some part of her was bracing for the blow of her mother’s reaction.
Curious, Mira thought. Did she filter everything through that emotional sieve?
Isn’t that what children do? She remembered times when she’d visited Carmina, chatting and drinking a bit of espresso while her friend’s children played nearby.
Inevitably, one of them would tumble or knock into something, and their immediate reaction—before any tears or even that first intake of breath—was to glance at their mother.
Mira remembered joking with Carmina about it.
“It’s like they’re checking your face to see whether they should cry or not,” she’d said, laughing. “Don’t they know if they’re hurt?”
“Sure they do,” Carmina had said. “But my reaction tells them how bad I think it is. If I smile and give them a quick dust-off and send them on their way, somehow they believe they’re tough, and they get right back at it.
If I gasp and look horrified—and there have been times, especially with the boys, where that’s been warranted—they’re afraid, too, and the wailing starts.
At some point, they figure it out and judge for themselves. They’ll quit looking to me.”
Mira wondered if, in some ways, she’d ever stopped looking to her own mother.
Maybe the difference was that Carmina’s children, she knew, had learned their mother loved them through scrapes and tears, failures and successes.
Her love seemed to be a given, as assured as the sun rising every morning.
Mira’s sun was less reliable. She’d always needed to check the horizon to be sure its rays were still there.
Mira and her mother could see the house in the distance. Her mother had been unusually quiet on the walk home, but then, Mira supposed, she’d been lost in her own thoughts, too.
“What’s going on up there?” her mother spoke, pointing to the house.
A strange car was angled in the yard. Who would have driven out this way? A visitor curious about the byssus?
Her mother stopped abruptly, her voice sharp. “It’s the polizia,” she said.
“Something’s happened,” Mira said, thinking immediately of Daniella. She lifted her skirts and sprinted toward the house, praying with every step that her daughter was safe.
Mira burst through the back door, sandy and breathless, her eyes blinded by having been in the bright sun. “Papà?” she called.
She heard Daniella’s happy squeal before she saw her, and she turned toward the sound, her arms already outstretched.
“Mira.” Her father handed Daniella to her, and she held the girl close and breathed her in, her wild imaginings banished. Finally, she registered the two polizia seated at the kitchen table, as if it were a normal occurrence for such officials to stop in for coffee.
“Where’s your mother?” her father asked. His smile was strained. He was not himself.
“On the way,” she explained, gesturing down the path. “We saw the car and it scared me.” Mira patted Daniella, who was pulling on her braid and trying to chew the end of it.
“Sorry to alarm you, Signora,” one of the officers said, rising. “Everyone is all right.”
Her father held up a finger. “Give me a moment, please, while I go find my wife. Please, enjoy the coffee.”
In the uncomfortable silence that followed, Mira smiled and glanced around the kitchen, seeing it as she imagined the officers might.
Sparse and orderly, plates and cups stacked on the open shelves that lined the walls.
A crusty loaf of bread cooled on an olive-wood cutting board near jars filled with dried beans and spices.
The large, weathered box they’d looked through earlier had been moved from the table to a shelf in the main sitting area.
A few dishes lay strewn in the sink, left from breakfast. Thin curtains fluttered at the window above.
She could see down the path where her father and mother were walking back toward the house, her arm in his, deep in conversation.
“Here they are,” Mira offered, bouncing Daniella on her hip. “She wasn’t far behind me.”
One of the officers—probably the senior of the two—stood as her parents entered the house.
“Signora Mazza,” he said with a nod of his head.
Mira noticed her mother’s uncharacteristic stiffness, the way she clenched her jaw, making the sinews in her neck stand out, how her dark eyes darted between the officers, sizing them up.
Her father still held her mother’s arm looped in his own.
His large hand covered hers, and he stood slightly in front of her, as if protecting her, it seemed.
Zaneta didn’t speak. She merely inclined her head as an inquiry.
The officer coughed, and Mira felt some compassion for the man. She’d been in his shoes before, knew how uncomfortable it could be when faced with her mother’s unflinching assessment.
“You may know,” he explained, “the Italian authorities have been in cooperation with the university to study the island’s nuragic ruins, to try and learn more about their history and such.”
Her mother shrugged slightly, twisting her mouth to suggest she was waiting to hear the relevance.
“In so doing,” the officer continued, “one of the field teams has discovered what they believe may be some sort of temple.”
“There’s no telling what’s under all the brush up there,” the second officer piped up. “It’s miles of untouched and half-buried structures. Now they think if they dust things off a bit, the mystery of it all may bring the tourists in. More business for the shops and such, right?”
“I’m a pescatore,” her father said, “and my wife weaves the byssus. Our place is by the shore, so we don’t really go up inland.”
“Well, Signore, it’s your wife’s hobby that we’re interested in, actually.”
“Hobby?” Mira almost winced at her mother’s acidic tone.
The younger officer stepped in. “Art,” he corrected.