Dante draped his arm around her shoulders. Signora Ferraro leaned into him, letting him comfort her.
“I don’t know what Anabella and I would have done without you, Dante. You have been such a blessing. I think Franco sent you to us, knowing we would need you.”
“And you and Anabella saved me. I, too, was lost after I lost my mother and grandmother. I know how difficult it was for you to share all of this with me, Signora Ferraro. Thank you. I hope you will consider telling Anabella. It would answer so many questions for her and even help her to see why you were so overprotective.”
“Every time I see sunflowers, it just brings me back to that day when I watched my husband’s execution. So now you know why I detest those flowers so much. But I must say your paintings of them are extraordinary, and seeing Anabella among them takes me back to when I was an innocent, young woman. Ah!” She sighed. “I will give more thought to sharing all of this with Anabella. So much guilt has plagued me over the years, especially the guilt that I have spoken so little about Franco to Anabella.”
“Well, maybe it is time she gets to know how brave both of her parents were. Someday, I will share the story with Valeria and Mariella, so that they will know what amazing grandparents they had and the risks their grandparents took to ensure Italy would be free again. We all have so much to thank the partisans for.”
“I never thought of it that way. Dante, I have lived with so much guilt—guilt that I lived when my family, husband, and so many others died. That is probably why I also never told anyone about my work with the Resistance. I didn’t work with the Resistance for a sense of recognition or to receive any honors. I don’t want people to commend me. But I promise I will think about telling Anabella.”
“You’ve been an excellent mother, Signora Ferraro. Don’t be so hard on yourself. We’ve all made mistakes.” He glanced at his watch. “I think we should check on Anabella and the twins.”
Dante stood and made his way up the basement stairs. When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw Signora Ferraro remained seated. She was staring at the painting of Anabella walking among the sunflower fields. He reflected on what she’d said about how Franco had appeared to her in a dream, telling her the roses would be her salvation. And he thought about how Anabella had first come to him in his dreams, walking through a sunflower field. Was Franco trying to give them all a message? Was he possibly trying to tell Signora Ferraro that it was time for her to finally put the horrors of the past behind her?
CHAPTER 33
Anabella
Pienza, 1975
Anabella kept the window of the car rolled down as her mother drove through the Tuscan countryside. These days, she wanted to feel everything life had to offer, even the pain she felt on her bad days—for it reminded her she was still alive.
Mamma had suggested they go for a drive and leave the twins at home with Dante. Though she missed the girls whenever they weren’t with her, it was nice to have some quiet time when she could reflect. Anabella also enjoyed the moments she and Mamma were alone and could catch up on all the conversations they had missed during the years they’d been estranged from each other.
What a fool she had been. Hadn’t Dante pleaded with her on several occasions to forgive her mother and end the long feud they’d had? But she and her mother had been so alike in their stubbornness—and fear. She realized now that Mamma had been just as afraid as she’d been of being rejected. But what was important was that they were together again and living as a family. That gave Anabella comfort, especially if she didn’t make it. Valeria, Mariella, and Dante would have her mother, and Mamma would have them. No, she could not think that. She would overcome this illness.
But just as soon as she was optimistic, the dark thoughts followed. Though there were times when she was incredibly angry that she might not live to see her daughters grow up and that she wouldn’t have more time with Dante and Mamma, she had learned to make her peace with the possibility that she might die. God had given her so many blessings the past few years—discovering what it was like to fall in love, having a devoted husband and two precious children, and having her mother back in her life. Even her childhood had been special. True, Mamma had sheltered her too much, but Anabella couldn’t deny how wonderful it had been to grow up in such a special, beautiful place as the rose farm. How she had missed it the years she wasn’t talking to Mamma. Though she had planted a small rose garden on the property she shared with Dante, it hadn’t felt the same. There was something about Mamma’s rose garden—an ethereal essence she had always felt whenever she walked among the rows of rose bushes. She had previously felt it the most when she was a child, but lately, the sensation seemed the strongest.
Anabella was so lost in her thoughts that she hadn’t noticed her mother had stopped the car until she heard Mamma say, “Let’s get out and take a walk.”
Anabella searched in her tote bag for her sunglasses and straw hat. When she looked up, she froze. They were parked alongside a vast field of sunflowers. She turned to look at Mamma, but she was already outside walking farther into the dense rows of sunflowers. Was she feeling all right?
Anabella got out of the car and shouted, “Mamma, why did you stop here? Are you not feeling well?”
Signora Ferraro stopped and waited for Anabella to catch up to her.
“I’m fine, Anabella. I thought this would be a good place to stop and take a walk.”
“But you hate—”
“Sunflowers.” Signora Ferraro finished Anabella’s sentence. “It’s all right. I’m fine. Come. Let’s walk.” She linked her arm through her daughter’s.
Bees were buzzing everywhere, and there was a light summer breeze. It was early August. Anabella hadn’t seen the sunflowers in the countryside all summer since she had been too busy with the girls and hadn’t felt well enough to take car drives. The chemo treatments had given her horrible bouts of nausea. But she had finished her last treatment a little over four weeks ago. Her hair was growing back, and, since she hadn’t lost all of it, she was able to have a cute bob. She couldn’t wait until her hair grew long again. For she missed it and had looked longingly at Dante’s portraits of her when they’d first met and her hair was down to her waist. Did Dante miss her long hair, too? If he did, he never let on. He still looked at her and made her feel as if she were the most beautiful woman in the world—the only woman for him. Tears filled her eyes as she thought about how much she loved him. Had Mamma loved her father this way?
“Mamma, I don’t think I’ve thanked you for all that you’ve done for me and the girls—and even Dante—since I’ve become sick. It means the world to me.”
“È niente! It’s my pleasure having you all with me. And of course I would do anything for you, just as I know you would do anything for me.” Signora Ferraro looked at Anabella and gave her arm a squeeze.
“We are lucky to live in such a beautiful place,” Anabella said as she took in the vast horizon of sunflowers before her.
“Si, i girasoli sono bellissimi. They along with our verdant green hills make Tuscany so enchanting.”
Anabella looked at her mother, surprise etched across her features. “You think the sunflowers are beautiful? When did you have a change of heart?”
Signora Ferraro laughed. “I didn’t always detest them, Anabella. In fact, I used to love them very much. And my father loved them even more. That is why I chose for us to live in Pienza when I left Florence, after your father died.”
“Really? But I don’t understand. Why did you tell me when I was a child and we drove by the sunflower fields not to look at them? Why did you get so upset that day when you found the sunflowers Chiara had given me in my room?”
Signora Ferraro stopped walking and released Anabella’s arm. She took a few steps forward, shielding her eyes from the sun as she looked off into the distance.
“I’m so sorry I acted that way, Anabella. Please believe me, I wasn’t upset with you that day when I exploded in your room. I
should have explained to you then, but I didn’t know how. And I was afraid to share too much with you. You were so young, and there were questions I’m sure you would have had that I wouldn’t have been sure how to answer.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Anabella. Her eyes suddenly clouded over, and she turned her gaze away once more as she resumed talking.
“My father had a sunflower garden behind our house in Florence, and he always said he wanted to have sunflowers as beautiful as the ones in the countryside. He also always said he wanted to live out his old years in Pienza. But that never happened.” Signora Ferraro’s voice sounded very sad as she said this.
“My father, brother, and sister-in-law were taken by the German soldiers from our house one afternoon while I was out. They took them along with many of our neighbors to an abandoned leather warehouse and bound their legs and hands. Then they set fire to the warehouse. No one survived.”
Anabella gasped.
“When I returned home and saw they were missing and that there had been foul play, I tried to find them. I rode my bicycle to the police headquarters to see if they had been brought in for questioning. Then I went to where your father worked. He came back with me to my house. When we arrived, we saw the plumes of smoke coming from around the block where the warehouse was. I didn’t suspect anything at first. But as I approached the fire, I noticed that many of the front doors of the houses on the streets were wide-open. Children’s toys, articles of clothing, and other belongings from the households were strewn on the steps and in front of the property, as if people had left in a hurry. When I realized that they had probably been taken to the warehouse and were in there dying as I watched the flames flicker, I ran toward the building, still thinking there was a chance maybe they could get out alive. But your father knew it was impossible. He kept me from getting any closer.”
“Why didn’t you ever tell me? I just thought my grandfather died from old age, and I seem to remember you once told me that Zio Michele and Zia Enza died in a car crash.”
“As I said before, you were so young. I didn’t want to frighten you by telling you they had been kidnapped and died an agonizing death.”
“Why did the Nazis take them?”
“At first, your father suspected they had found out that Zio Michele and Zia Enza were working for the Resistance, but that didn’t explain why they took the other neighbors, many of whom were innocent of any partisan activity, especially the old people and children. What crimes could the children have committed?” Signora Ferraro shook her head, and a look of disgust passed over her face. “When I saw they were missing from home, at first I thought it might’ve also been my fault.”
“Your fault, Mamma? How?”
“Your father and I also worked for the Resistance.” Signora Ferraro turned and looked at Anabella as she said this.
“Papà didn’t die fighting in the war like you told me?”
“No.”
“So you lied.”
“Si. I thought I was protecting you.”
“But you always told me when I was a little girl that we were not to keep secrets from each other or lie.” Anabella was hurt.
“I know. I’m so sorry, Anabella. I didn’t do it out of malice, please believe that. It is just that I always wanted to shield you from anything ugly or evil. And I couldn’t bear to relive the excruciating pain I endured after my family and your father died. How could I expect you as a young child to hear about such horrors and to see your mother fall apart?”
“I remember now when I was maybe three or four, you would cry so hard sometimes, and I would kiss you to make you stop.”
Signora Ferraro smiled. “Si, you did make me feel better, my sweet daughter.”
“But you could’ve told me when I was older.”
“I know, but at that point I had become so accustomed to trying to repress the memories, and, again, part of me thought it was best that you never knew what really happened to them.”
“What did you and Papà do for the Resistance?”
“Your father had started an anti-Fascist newspaper, long before the war began and the Germans occupied Florence. Because his articles ranted against Mussolini and the Fascist regime, he had been arrested. I met him after he had managed to escape from jail; he was hiding in my father’s sunflower garden.” Signora Ferraro smiled as she remembered the first time she had laid eyes on Franco. “That was just a few months before the Germans came to Florence. I saw him again at the outdoor market a couple of weeks later, and that was when he asked me to join the Resistance. Naturally, I was reluctant at first, afraid of the danger I would be putting myself as well as my family in. I had suspected that my brother and his wife were also working with the Resistance, but it was a different group from the one Franco was affiliated with. So Franco, your father, told me I could write articles for his newspaper. He intrigued me, and I was also moved by the work they were doing. I began to want to do something as well. So at first I was just writing for the newspaper, but then I began delivering the newspapers, and then, behind your father’s back, I delivered food, supplies, and even ammunitions to a few of the partisans who were staked out in the hills and elsewhere, waiting to attack the Germans.”
“You did all of that?” Anabella’s eyes widened as she looked at her mother, not knowing who this other woman she was describing was.
“Si, your mother who rarely leaves Pienza except to sell her flowers in Siena was this crazy young woman who refused to listen when someone told her that she couldn’t do something. Believe me, your father began to have second thoughts about having me involved. We fell in love almost immediately after meeting. He was afraid of losing me, and I was afraid of losing him, too. But how could I stop risking my life when I knew he wouldn’t because he believed so much in what he was doing? And I began to realize how important it was that we follow through to the end and do all we could to restore freedom to Italy. So that was why I thought that possibly I was to blame for my family’s being taken away and killed. I wondered if the Nazis had found out that I was also part of the Resistance. But then, after the fire, we found out that not all of my neighbors had been rounded up and killed. The German soldiers spared a few of them so that they could tell everyone in the village that they burned our loved ones in retaliation for the partisan attacks. As the partisans began having more victories, the Germans made it more of a habit to kill as many villagers as they could in retaliation. They hoped it would deter the partisans and stop the Resistance, but they were wrong.”
“What about Papà?”
“He kept fighting and became involved in the more dangerous aspects of the work.”
“No, Mamma. I meant how did Papà die?”
Signora Ferraro took a deep breath and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her lips quivered as tears slid down her face. Anabella walked toward her.
“You can tell me, Mamma. I’m here.” Anabella wrapped her arms around her mother, holding her tightly.
“He died in my father’s sunflower garden. You were only three months old and were sleeping in your crib. Something woke me up. Your father had planned to leave that morning for a dangerous mission. I don’t know what the operation entailed. We had decided the less I knew the better, for I would’ve gone absolutely mad with worry. So I got out of bed and went downstairs. The front door had been left open, and your father’s eyeglasses were lying on the floor, shattered. I ran back upstairs. I placed you in a picnic basket and hid you in the back of my father’s bedroom armoire. Then, I grabbed the revolver we kept in the house and made my way outside. When I reached the back of the house, I saw your father and two other partisans he worked with standing in the garden with their arms raised over their heads. Two German soldiers aimed their rifles and shot them—over and over again.”
“Oh, Mamma!” Anabella cried out.
Signora Ferraro leaned fully into her daughter as she hugged her back. They both sobbed uncontrollably. Anabella could feel her mother’s chest heavin
g against hers, and as she held her, she couldn’t help but notice the sunflowers. No wonder Mamma had despised the sight of them. And now she had chosen to tell Anabella how her father had died in, of all places, a sunflower field. Was Mamma seeing Papà standing before her once again as bullets riddled his body? Why had she tortured herself by coming here?
Once Signora Ferraro composed herself, she continued. “Within seconds of your father’s being shot, my thoughts raced furiously through my head, and I realized there was only one course of action I could take. Slowly, I walked up to the soldiers and shot both of them.”
Signora Ferraro waited for Anabella’s reaction, but Anabella only nodded for her to continue as she pushed back a few loose, wet strands of hair that were clinging to her mother’s cheek.
“I had no other choice. If I had let them live, there was a chance they would’ve killed me and then gone to search the house. If they had found you—”
“It is all right, Mamma. You were protecting me.”
“That’s not the only reason I killed them. I admit that I also wanted to avenge your father’s death. In that moment, when I saw them shoot him, a rage took over me, and I was determined they weren’t going to kill any other of my loved ones. I had no family left but you, Anabella.”
The Sunflower Girl Page 30