Chapter Ten
There is still a void in her heart, a sadness that lingers like bruises around her eyes.
He brings her gifts from all the places she has yet to see, tells her stories in hopes they will inspire her, but her smiles still never quite reach her eyes.
The fissure in her heart started with a child.
As he overlooks the house she once called a home, its garden full of laughter and life, he wonders if her surviving family can heal it.
Genoa
The years have been kinder since she screamed into the night, the smell of all her labor burning hanging in the air and Khiran’s arms quietly holding the pieces of her together as she fell apart. The dawn came and the village mob never descended.
No one can hear you. No one can see.
Anna knows she has him to thank for that.
He held her through the night, shrouded them so she could break without fear of being found.
Anna didn’t recognize it at the time, but it might have been one of the most merciful gifts he’s given her—outdone only by the food and funds he’d left her and Piers with in her moment of desperation.
There was something cathartic about vocalizing the pain she’d held for so long, something that healed the raw jagged edges of her heart.
Over the next weeks, Khiran flitted in and out of her travels.
Always bearing gifts of food and stories from lands so far from her own.
She tried dishes that looked to be fit for kings and others that looked unassuming and homely but tasted just as delicious.
He told her their names, their origins. None of them were from places she’d been, and most were from lands she’d never heard of.
Moqueca, a fish stew, from an island called Marajó.
Kaeng lueang from the kingdom of Ayutthaya to the east. Doro wat from Abyssinia to the south.
Every dish was different from the last; the flavors as rich and varied as the lands they hailed from.
During their meals, Khiran would point out constellations and tell her how every culture looks up at the same night sky and finds different stories written in the stars.
He even showed her some of the ones named after him.
She had known what he was doing—realized that the things he brought were meant to inspire her to see the wonders the world still had to offer her. It seems strange, to find comfort in the vastness of the world. Yet, somehow, it does.
Anna stands, the sun warming her shoulders and the white clouds casting moving shadows over the graves.
Khiran had urged her to find something beautiful to chase away the nightmare, to force her to wake up.
Genoa is the first place she thinks of—it’s one of the few places she remembers feeling at peace.
So, even though the city carries old ghosts, that’s where she goes.
Fresh from the road, she hasn’t even stopped to think of a plan. She has nowhere to stay, nowhere to go. In this moment, staring down at the headstone with the name of the man she called a son, none of it matters.
The date of death stares back at her, an accusation:
1348.
The year she was in Venice, when the dead were intent on outnumbering the living. She thinks of rotten flesh and black, puss filled boils and feverish eyes. She knows, without being told, what took Piers from this world.
He was only forty.
A good life. Longer and more full than the one fate would have handed him should she not have stumbled on his dirty, tear-streaked face peeking out between the roots of that ancient forest. Long enough to marry, to have children.
Comfortable enough for the family to afford a burial in a sea of mass graves.
Somehow, none of it provides the comfort it should.
“Good man, that one.”
Anna frowns, looking up to find the groundskeeper staring at her. He’s older, hair white beneath his cap and face lined with years. “You … knew him?”
No, that would be impossible. It’s been nearly a hundred years since his death.
The groundskeeper laughs, no doubt thinking the same. “No, no. He left this world long before I was born, but my mother told me stories.” He smiles, and despite never meeting him—despite his yellowed and missing teeth—it feels familiar. “Piers was my grandfather.”
The air leaves her lungs in a rush, her chest aching around the emptiness. “Your grandfather?” she echoes, the words strangled by the knot in her throat. She looks back at Piers’ headstone, drowning in a wave of mixed emotions.
The plague claimed Piers, but somehow his family survived.
She wets her lips, looks back up and finds the groundkeeper’s gaze. “What’s your name?”
“Franco.” He tips his hat, his worn hand gesturing to the headstone of his grandfather. “Would you like to hear about him?”
The offer is a kindness he will never understand. Anna nods, fighting to find her voice. “Yes. Thank you, Franco.”
His smile is Piers’ smile, dimpling in the corners. “Wait here. These stories are best told with wine.”
He returns with a blanket, a bottle of wine, three glasses, and a large cut of cheese.
Laying the blanket over the ground, he pours the glasses and sets one at the base of Piers’ headstone.
“It is not yet All Souls Day,” he explains softly, “But if the stories are true, I suspect my grandfather will be here to enjoy a glass with us.”
Anna nods, accepting her glass with a quiet thank you.
Franco raises his glass. “Salute.”
She mimics the motion, echoes the words, and takes a drink. The wine warms the emptiness in her chest.
“Many families lost everything and everyone in those years. Genoa felt like a city of ghosts, the streets and houses were so empty. The way Mama told it, our family would have joined them if not for her father. They lived in a tiny cottage outside the city—Nonni used to joke that it wasn’t big enough for a family of three let alone six, and she hated how far from the market it was, but Nonno refused to leave it.
It was his mother’s home you see, the one he grew up in.
No matter how Nonni needled him to move, he held fast. Mama says that little cottage is what saved their lives when the plague came. ”
He breaks off a chunk of cheese and hands it to her.
Anna accepts it with a trembling hand, but doesn’t bring it to her lips.
There are memories dancing behind her eyes.
A small stone and mortar home with a red tiled roof and a garden off the kitchen where Piers would eat tomatoes straight from the vine.
Franco takes a sip of wine, his blue eyes sharp and unfaltering as he stares at her over the rim.
When he lowers it, he glances at the name on the headstone.
“She was well-learned in healing apparently—his mother. Taught Grandfather Piers enough for him to recognize a disaster when it came. They stayed at the cottage, far enough away to escape the sickness ravaging the city. Mama was only six when it happened, but she remembered not understanding why she couldn’t go see Nonna’s side of the family when they used to visit weekly …
she remembers how hungry she felt when the garden had no more to give them.
She remembers her father leaving to get food, of waking to find it on their front step and her father having boarded himself in the stables for a week before he would allow himself to join them again.
When the food ran out, he made the trip again.
And again. And again. Until the plague claimed him and he passed away alone, having kept his family safe to the very end. ”
Anna’s throat is too tight to speak. She knows if she tried, the only thing likely to pass her lips is a weak sob.
There’s a trembling in her limbs, her knuckles white as she grips her cup and struggles to quiet the shaking.
She ducks her head, hoping Franco didn’t catch sight of the tears stubbornly gripping her lower lashes.
His hand finds hers, the calluses lining his palms are rough—a testament to how many of these graves he must have been responsible for digging. “Don’t be sad, Bisnonna.”
Anna’s head snaps up, her eyes wide and her heart wild.
The smile Franco gives her is warm and knowing. He squeezes her hand. “Your son lived well and died honorably.”
Anna learns that it was not memories alone that bound Piers to their little cottage, but the hope that someday she’d return.
She learns that he passed down their story through his children, and their children to theirs.
Franco took the job of groundskeeper to watch over his grandfather’s grave, the same way his widowed sister still lives in the cottage.
To watch. To wait. Because Piers’ had been so certain that someday she would return.
Franco takes her to the home she raised him in over a century ago.
It’s larger than before, rooms added over the generations to mold to the growing families that lived inside it.
The garden is larger, too. A long table sits amongst the tall tomato vines and herbs.
She lets her fingertips trace the doorways, drag along the walls.
Touching it feels more real than the smiles she’s welcomed with; less surreal.
When she looks hard enough, she can see traces of Piers in all of them.
They eat in the garden, wine flowing and food lining the center table in a feast she hasn’t had in years—focaccia and salt cod, pansotti with walnut sauce and fried squid.
And, of course, plenty of pesto. They eat and drink to their heart’s content, laughter filling the garden as they trade stories long after the sun sets and stars dot the sky.
It is the family Anna has never had; the family she never knew to want.