Chapter 39
All the air left the room. Even the muslin curtains at the window stilled.
Something held Mira’s arm, anchoring her to the ground, thankfully, or else she might have floated away, through the ceiling and tiled roof, up into the night sky she knew to be flecked with stars.
There was Papà, staring at her with his wide green eyes brimming with tears.
Daniella, still in her chair, her mouth agape and eyes fixed on her mother.
Her mother, undisturbed, fussing with her bag and shawl, as if she’d just announced the butcher had a sale going on lamb this week.
And Mira somehow saw herself from above, looking as she must have to everyone else in the room—one hand at her throat, her face drained of color, blinking slowly like she’d had too much wine.
Ah, she thought from where she drifted, dizzy, above the house.
Well, of course. Fragments of memory wafted past, feathers carried by an invisible wind.
Moments from her childhood, arrows her mother had loosed.
They were tangled with memories of Daniella as a baby, Mira holding her close, watching her toddle on the shore, Dani glancing back at her to be certain she was still there.
Always, my love, always. It was a strange timeline, backward to her own beginnings and forward to Daniella’s, Mira suspended in the middle, holding the golden thread connecting them.
Mira watched the thread reach far into the sky above and knew by heart the names of the other mothers, all weavers, who held their own length of the cord.
Through her body, vibrations resonated from the line as they tapped it, playing it like a fiddle.
Below her, in the kitchen, she watched as the cord unspooled from her and reached its gossamer tendril around her daughter, its filament a vine seeking purchase.
No matter the fate of the byssus, they were all connected, their pasts sending ripples into futures down the line.
Mira watched as Daniella stood and walked to her, felt her daughter’s arms encircle her neck and her warmth as she hugged her close.
The vibration suddenly stopped. Mira let out a long breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.
Through a dull pounding, which she realized must have been her heartbeat thrumming its slow measure in her ears, Mira heard her name.
“Mira? Mira, look at me.”
Dante. It was Dante who’d been grasping her arm, Dante trying to pull her back down from the stars to the kitchen. His face was white with pain. He shouldn’t have been exerting himself after the surgery.
Once more, the floor beneath her feet was solid. She was back in the kitchen, surrounded by her family.
“It’s all right, Dani,” she said, returning the hug.
“Really, Dante, you need to sit down. And, Papà—” She smiled, reassuring her father, whose face looked shattered, not on his own behalf—clearly, he’d suspected—but for her.
“I’m okay. It explains a lot, actually. Something I think I’d known had been brewing for a long time.
But it doesn’t change anything. You’re my papà.
The one I’ve always known and loved. The one who built me the beautiful loom that I treasure with all my heart. ”
Luccio swiped a hand across his eyes and sniffed loudly.
“Let’s get you home,” he said to her mother, clearing his throat, but his eyes were locked with Mira’s, speaking volumes without saying a word.
Perhaps they would make time for that later, but Mira wasn’t certain she needed anything else filled in.
A few days later, apparently satisfied that her parents could manage, Daniella returned to Venezia.
Carmina drove her to Cagliari to catch the ferry to the mainland while Mira stayed with Dante.
She wasn’t yet ready to leave him alone in case he needed her.
Daniella had arranged for a friend to pick her up from the airport, and she promised to call when she reached her apartment.
Mira brewed some coffee and set two chairs outside the front door in the small garden.
As the afternoon faded into dusk, she and Dante sat together watching the sky’s palette of lavender and rose fade into the horizon.
The cozy house was once more theirs, and although they’d welcomed having Daniella home again and were grateful for neighbors and friends who’d stopped by to say hello and leave a loaf of bread or a round of cheese, a comfort settled upon them as they returned to their quiet party of two.
“Want to talk about it?” Dante asked. He sipped his coffee and stretched his legs out in front of him on the grass.
Mira sighed. “My German heritage, you mean? I don’t really see how it changes anything. I’m still me.”
He reached a hand across the space between them and rested it on her arm. “That’s all I want.”
“It makes a lot of sense of things I grew up with. How she sometimes looked at me. Her moods. I thought it was losing everyone in the war, but there was more to it.”
“None of it was your fault. You know that, right?”
“Of course.” She paused. “You know, when we were together, reading Berenice’s letter for the first time, I thought then there was something she wanted to say. She couldn’t do it, not until she wasn’t in control of her memory anymore. There was a lot in Berenice’s story that I see now.”
She smiled at him. “I’ve been thinking. This morning, before Daniella left, I was boxing up some weavings of byssus I’d done. She wanted to take some back with her to be photographed.”
He nodded. “It’s fantastic that your work will finally receive some attention from outside the island. It’s art. It should be shown.”
Mira shrugged it off. Fame had never been a weaver’s aim. “In case something should happen to the craft, that’s a good thing, I suppose. It won’t be forgotten.”
“Dani may be going a different way, but she might someday have a daughter . . .” Dante trailed off.
“Whether she does or not, it’s for her to work out. That’s what I started to say. I happened to look up and catch my reflection in the window. For a second, I thought it was Dani standing behind me.”
“The older she gets, the more she looks like you.”
“You think so? But she’s not me, and she shouldn’t be.”
“Since you found the box with your family’s photographs in it, I actually think you look more like your grandmother. I just hadn’t seen it before.”
“Hm. Really?” Mira smiled, considering.
The phone rang, and Mira rose to answer it. “That’ll be Daniella, I hope.”
“I’m home, Mamma,” the voice on the line said, and Mira knew it was true. Home, for Daniella, was no longer Sant’Antioco.
“Brava, amore. Your father and I were just having some coffee in the quiet.”
“I can picture you. Outside in the garden? I’m so glad Papà’s going to be okay.”
“He’ll be back to teaching as soon as he can. Thanks for the call and for coming, even with . . . well, everything. Probably with all your resources at the university, you can dig up all sorts of new family history if you want. I’m happy with mine as is, though, Daniella.”
“All right, Mamma. I understand.”
“Oh, I tucked something in with the byssus when I was wrapping it up for you. I love you, piccina.”
“Love you, Mamma. Ciao.”
Daniella hung up the phone and twisted her long brown hair into a messy bun.
She had laundry to do before going back to work in the morning.
Her grandmother’s story had no bearing on the research the team would be doing with the nuragic ruins, but imagined scenes played in Daniella’s mind all the same.
She’d have to keep her personal life separate from her work, although in her case, that was a tricky task.
For centuries, the byssus had braided their work into their personal lives.
Who was she to think she could unlink the two?
She turned to the box that held the wrapped byssus pieces.
Daniella was excited to show the university curators actual examples of the material itself rather than photos gathered from museum displays around the world.
Some of these were newer, intricate miniature tapestries her mother or grandmother had wrought.
Some she remembered from her childhood. Her mother had included a golden scene of fishing boats anchored near the quay.
Daniella heard the cries of the gulls in her head and could conjure the smell of the sea.
What had her mother added to the box? She dug through the cloth and found, at the bottom, a handheld mirror.
It was the one that had lain on her mother’s bedroom chest for as long as she could remember.
Beneath it lay a note in her mother’s handwriting.
She swept aside the suitcase that crowded her bed and sat.
Dani,
Knowing your grandmother’s story changes nothing about us.
You’re as beautiful, smart, and loved as ever.
I hope that’s what you see when you look in this mirror.
It’s what I see when I look at you. Although you came from me, you’re uniquely you.
It’s been one of my greatest delights to discover you as you’ve grown up.
I see now your grandmother saw me as a reflection of her, but not because I looked like her or followed the byssus path.
You know how she can be. She wanted a flattering reflection, one that didn’t also remind her who my father was or stir up memories of her family that were simply too painful for her to face.
One that she shaped and directed to please her.
Berenice’s letter has taken you in an unexpected direction.
For a time, I was sad about that. But I see what you’re doing with the letter, your research—it’s bringing preservation of the byssus in a different way, one that’s no less important.
Byssus or no, Daniella, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you’re loved.
Daniella held the letter to her chest for a moment.
She was both grateful for her mother’s words and sad that Mira hadn’t heard or felt that herself.
Lifting the mirror, Dani studied her face.
She was tired from the travel, her hair a mess.
During the week she’d spent in Sant’Antioco, she’d run into so many neighbors and friends who’d known her as a child.
Over and over again, she’d heard them remark, “You look so much like your mother”; “You’re your mother’s image twenty years ago”; “My goodness, I almost thought you were Mira.”
It was true. Same eyes, same mouth. It used to irritate Dani to hear such things when she was younger, in school. This time, though, it buoyed her heart. If she resembled her mother—in looks or her strength or capacity for love and forgiveness—she could do far worse.
“Grazie,” she’d responded all week, with a smile. “Grazie.”