Cinderella's Shoes

by Shonna Slayton

  After making plans to meet up later in the day, Johnny went to work. Princess Kolodenko invited Kate to tour the gardens with her and Lidka when Nessa’s mom walked in. “If it’s all right with the girls, I’d like them to go with Dad and me to the Gadini farm.”

  “They’ve got a stalled tractor,” Mr. De Luca explained. “It’s a beautiful drive.”

  “Sure,” Kate said.

  “You don’t have to go,” Nessa said. “He’s terrible on these farms. Has to teach me about every mechanical device there is.”

  “Don’t listen to this one,” Mr. De Luca said, grabbing his keys. “A girl should know how to drive a tractor.”

  Nessa rolled her eyes, but followed him and her mom out to the car.

  Mr. De Luca drove slowly over the dusty dirt roads, past fields and grazing cows. He kept up a running commentary on the history of each farm they passed. The crops, the orchards, and the particular brand of wine that came from each vineyard.

  “Here we are.” Mr. De Luca parked in front of a modest farmhouse. There was a new barn on the property and several smaller, older buildings alongside. Before they’d gotten out of the car, the farmer was halfway across the driveway, his hand outstretched. Mr. De Luca introduced Kate, then started speaking in rapid-fire Italian, presumably about the tractor problem.

  While the men were talking, the farmer’s wife opened the door and waved at Nessa’s mom and the girls to come in. When they were almost to the door, a scruffy little boy came out of hiding from around the house. He was wearing too-big shorts cinched tightly at his waist.

  “You American?” he asked in his choked English.

  When Kate nodded, he grinned and ran out to the barn, calling for them to follow.

  “Go ahead, girls. Come to the house when you’re done,” Nessa’s mom said.

  Inside the empty barn, he climbed a ladder to the loft, chatting in excited Italian. Nessa had stopped interpreting, he was talking so fast. By the time the girls had climbed to the top, he had opened a cigar box and was laying out his treasures for them to see.

  “Look, look,” he said in English, followed by more Italian.

  “He says he collected souvenirs from the soldiers,” Nessa translated.

  Together they looked through the boy’s special collection of military pins, an English comic book (Fumetti! Fumetti!), and even a picture of a pretty girl. The boy blushed and tucked it back into the corner of the lid.

  Kate thought about what she had on her that she could add to his collection. She’d brought Johnny’s sweetheart pin from the war, but she wasn’t giving that up to this boy. She checked her pockets and pulled out half a package of Wrigley’s. “Gum?” she offered him.

  He snatched it up eagerly and added it to his box. He spoke, and Nessa translated, “This next item is his most special. He has shown only one other, so we are favored.” Then he brought out the item he was holding special. It was a set of dog tags.

  Nessa exclaimed in rebuking Italian, then repeated herself for Kate’s sake. “Where did you get these?”

  The boy answered.

  “He traded them from some boy from Florence,” Nessa said. “I hope the soldier gave them away and they weren’t stolen,” she mumbled. “But he’s got both tags, so the soldier had to be living.” She handed the tags back to the boy. He took them from her and insisted Kate admire them, too.

  Dutifully, Kate accepted the dog tags, but a quick look made a shiver go down her arms. She read the name out loud. “David Floyd Allen. That’s my dad!” How did this boy have her dad’s tags? How dare he? These tags should be with her dad, or be in the box of his things at home in New York. Not in the crusty cigar box of an Italian farm boy.

  “What?” Nessa tried to take the silver tags out of Kate’s hands, but she held on tight, like they were a lifeline.

  “David Allen.” Kate pointed to his name. “And here’s my mother’s name below it with our address.” She pointed to the upper right. “His blood type here, and his gas mask size there.” Kate’s voice had gone up an octave.

  The boy, noticing something was wrong, had quickly started to put back all his treasures. He reached out for the dog tags, but Kate closed her fingers around them in a protective fist.

  “No. Tell me everything you know about these,” she demanded.

  With wide eyes, he looked imploringly at Nessa. They carried on a conversation in Italian for several minutes before the boy slammed the lid shut on his treasures, and he took off down the ladder, leaving one last sad glance at Kate’s clenched hand. “Mi scusi.”

  “What did he say?” she asked, barely breathing. She had listened carefully for any Italian words she might recognize but heard nothing.

  “He’s a little upset that he is losing his prized possession, but he is happy that they have found the place they belong. He went with his uncle to Florence last year and met a street boy who traded him these tags for all the money he had brought with him.” Nessa smiled. “He said since he spent all this money on the exchange, he had to watch his cousins eat gelato lick by lick while he had none.”

  Kate felt for the boy, but she wasn’t giving up her dad’s tags. “I’ll gladly pay him for his troubles. What else did he say? Where did the street boy get them? From my father?”

  Nessa stood and made her way to the ladder. “He said it sounded like a made-up story created to drive up the price of the tags.”

  “What? There might be some truth in it.”

  Nessa swung a leg over and began her descent down the ladder.

  Kate scrambled after her. “Tell me.” She caught up to Nessa outside. She reached out to catch her arm and spin her around.

  Looking at the ground, Nessa sighed. “You’re not going to like it.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You know there was an explosion in one of the buildings. The boy says that an older boy went digging through the rubble and found these.”

  Kate’s breath caught. No, it couldn’t be. The military would have found them first. They would have been on her father’s body. She had to ask. “Did he . . . Did the boy take them off a body?”

  Nessa bit her lip before answering. “He didn’t say.”

  “A boy would know not to take tags off a body, wouldn’t he? Then this is our first proof my dad could still be alive.” Kate sat, stunned. She allowed herself a small smile. There hadn’t been a body.

  Nessa looked doubtful. “It’s been too long,” she whispered.

  Kate was getting so tired of everyone saying how long it had been. “Come on,” she implored. “You’re Cinderella’s descendant. Where’s your optimism? Look at all she went through, but she never gave up hope.”

  When they got back to the farmhouse, everyone turned to look at Kate. The boy must have told them what happened. Mr. De Luca held out his hand.

  Kate gave him the dog tags so he could examine them. “Your father’s?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This is a surprise,” he said.

  “A good one, though, don’t you think?” She bounced a little on her toes.

  Mr. De Luca glanced at his daughter before answering. “I’m sorry we have no answers for you. Only more questions.”

  They ended the visit with a late lunch. The farmer’s wife went out of her way to take care of Kate, apologizing over and over that her son kept the tags. Kate offered to pay the boy, but under his mother’s watchful eye, he refused.

  To show she had no hard feelings, Kate made sure she smiled as the conversation went on around her in Italian and Nessa tried to interpret the important lines of conversation about crops and food prices. But Kate wasn’t listening. She was too busy trying to wrap her mind around this discovery.

  The ride back to the villa was a long and quiet one. Mr. De Luca had tried to get the girls talking, but after too many grunts for answers, even he gave up. Instead, he launched into singing folksy songs from his boyhood.

  Once the car pulled to a stop, Kate jumped out and headed straight f
or the front door. She hesitated with her hand on the knob. She could feel the family exchanging looks behind her. She knew they were worried about her, but she needed time to be alone and think things through.

  “I’m going to walk around the gardens,” she said, turning from the door.

  Nessa made a move to follow her, but her grandfather held her arm. He shook his head.

  Kate kept walking, through the gardens, following the trail through a field, up a small hill, and ended at the movie shoot in the valley below. When she came up to the crew from behind, she realized she didn’t want to be alone after all. If Johnny’s strong shoulder was available, she suddenly needed to crumble on it while he stroked her hair and told her everything would be okay.

  She quickly spotted him. He was leaning on a card table going over the script. As she approached him, he looked up and zeroed in on her face. He dropped his pencil and pulled her in to his chest. She wrapped her arms around his neck and breathed out, her body shuddering. This whole trip she’d been thinking logically: find Malwinka, get the shoes, find her dad. It had been a to-do list, and a kind of fairy-tale game. But now it felt real. The stakes were high, and she didn’t know if she measured up.

  “Hey, hey. What’s going on?” he asked, pushing her away and wiping her cheek with his thumb.

  She held up the dog tags. They dangled lifelessly from her hand.

  Johnny reached for them. Recognition dawned as he read the names on the tag. “What? How?”

  “Mr. De Luca took us to a farm, and while we were there, the boy showed us his keepsakes from the war. He had a bunch of trinkets different soldiers had given him and some he had traded for. Like these.”

  Kate stroked her fingers over the stamped letters. She didn’t know what to think of the tags. Dad could have dropped them. Soldiers were supposed to wear them, so that a body could be identified and the other person on the tag notified.

  She took a deep breath. “The boy said the tags were found in the rubble of a bombed-out building.”

  “I’m sorry, Kate; that’s hard to hear. What are you thinking?”

  Her initial reaction had been one of hope, but after her walk, new thoughts had emerged. “So many things. I’m trying to figure out how his tags ended up where they did. Let’s assume he was in the building when the explosion went off. If he was knocked unconscious, someone could have rescued him, but the tags should have stayed around his neck, secure under his shirt. Same if he wandered off on his own somehow.” She held them up. “Look, the chain’s not broken. It didn’t fall off.”

  “So?”

  “So then, the tags were purposely taken off. Either by my dad or someone else. He could have been captured by the enemy and taken to a POW camp.”

  “But those have all been liberated.”

  “I know. So I am more convinced he’s lost, just wandering around Italy not knowing who he is. I have a picture I can show to people. If we start in Florence where the tags were found and work outward from there, I’m sure we’ll find him.”

  “But Floyd did that already. He got nowhere. And the Italians would certainly notice an English speaker wandering around and try to help him, wouldn’t they?”

  Kate set her lips tight and crossed her arms.

  “Hey, Sparky. I’m not trying to pick a fight, I’m just helping you talk this through.”

  She put her hands to her temples. “You’re right. The tags distracted me. I need to stay with my original plan. I’m here to find Cinderella’s shoes and see if they can lead me to my dad.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning, Nessa woke Kate up early and spirited her away. “Come. There’s something I want to show you.” She handed Kate an apple and led her up a dirt path, going around the back of the castle. The sun rising over the hills revealed dark clouds covering half the sky.

  “What do you think of my cousin?” Nessa asked once they were a distance away from the house. She began tossing her apple up and catching it.

  Kate relaxed. She had been expecting Nessa to bring up the dog tags again. Last night by the end of dinner, it had become the general consensus that Kate’s discovery was a happy coincidence to bring her family closure. She had given up arguing about it, but noticed Nessa watching her closely.

  “She’s been through a lot,” Kate said tentatively, and bit into her apple. She had woken up ravenous and was already looking forward to Mr. De Luca’s breakfast.

  “True. But so many have. How long should a girl nurse her grievances?”

  “I suppose it’s different for everyone.”

  “Did she tell you where Babcia’s people found her?”

  “A work camp. They were looking for your sister?”

  Nessa caught her apple and put it in her pocket. “Babcia was hoping. But my sister was dead before the camp was liberated.”

  “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “To start, she took too many chances. She was a spy and got found out. That was how she was killed.”

  A spy? Nessa’s sister was one of those courageous girls she’d read about. “What did she do?”

  Nessa wrapped her arms around her middle, as if comforting herself. “All kinds of things, most of which she wouldn’t talk about. She was out at all hours sneaking around. There was a boy. She met him on one of her missions.” Nessa sighed. “They went off and got married. Babcia nearly had a fit when she found out.” She looked at Kate. “Now that I’ve seen the family wedding dress, I understand. She gave all that up. She didn’t want to wait.” Nessa frowned. “Good thing she didn’t, either. She was captured just two months later and shipped off to that work camp. Her husband risked his life coming to our place to tell us in person. He was a wreck. My sister had his heart. He still hangs around whenever his job lets him.”

  “I’m sorry. That’s such a sad, romantic tale.”

  “I guess it is, if I wasn’t so close to it. Babcia says she sent him to America to find Elsie after the war, but he had no luck.”

  Kate sucked in a breath. “In his twenties? Blond, and has a habit of twisting his hat?”

  Nessa laughed. “How did you know? My sister was constantly fixing hats for him. Why?”

  “I turned someone away once who was looking for Adalbert and Elsie.” How different things would have been if Kate had known who he was at the time. “And what about Lidka? You don’t seem to like her very much.”

  “It is that obvious?” Nessa picked a wildflower by the path and twirled it as they walked. “She is hard to get to know. She doesn’t let everyone in. She has my babcia wrapped around her little finger. Lidka even moved into my sister’s room when she came to stay with us. Can you imagine? A whole villa full of rooms and that is the one she chooses. Babcia said it was nice for the room to have life again. Bah. I was happy when she left. She was lazy, wouldn’t help with anything. She expected me to wait on her all the day long.”

  Kate quirked a smile, imagining Nessa playing the part of maid when all she seemed to do was hand off chores to other people. “She had been in a work camp; I’ve heard about how terrible they were.”

  Nessa rolled her eyes. “Believe me, I know. It was her excuse for everything. You would think after a year that she would have gotten over it.”

  Kate was speechless.

  “You think I sound cruel?” Nessa tossed the flower into the ditch. “I know she was traumatized. We have a nation of people who have been traumatized, but with Lidka, it is different. She is angry and she continually fuels her anger. Babcia thought she could save her, but then one day Lidka disappeared. We searched for her, but she took her things—and some of my sister’s belongings—and ran away. Not even a thank-you to Babcia and Dziadek. It devastated them. They could not fix her, and despite their kindness, she hurt them. I am not happy to see her come back. I know my babcia. She thinks this is another chance to save the girl.”

  From far away, the stone building looked untouched from the years, but as they got closer, Kate saw the pieces of
stone that had fallen away, the grass and the weeds that had attempted to reclaim the land to its wild state. They had to pick their way around various obstacles to get to the front door.

  “During the war, we hid the Australian soldiers in here,” Nessa said as she stepped across the threshold. There was half a wooden door still hanging. “Babcia wanted to repair the door for them, but Dziadek thought it best to keep the castle looking as abandoned as possible.”

  “Wasn’t that dangerous for you?”

  “We started small, taking children from the city. Because of the farms, we had food, and there was less danger of bombs. We would hand out provisions to those who were passing through. Hiding a friend, then friends of friends, then strangers. I was the runner who warned them to head to the woods whenever an inspection came through. They got pretty fast at cleaning up their stuff and running.”

  “And you never got caught?” The air cooled off immediately when Kate followed her through. The light was dim, coming mostly from the open-air windows, though farther inside they entered a room where the roof had caved in and birds had taken up residence. “This seems like an obvious place to hide.”

  “True, but there is the saying of hiding in plain sight. It does seem obvious, and every time they looked, there was nothing to find. We had a few close calls, but I would sneak around the back way as the cars were driving to the villa. We could see the cars from far away so I had time to slip out. Dziadek let the road to the castle fall into disrepair, and we made it worse by digging big holes.”

  “Hidden in plain sight,” Kate repeated.

  “Kind of like you putting the Kopciuszek dresses in the department store window.”

  Kate smiled. She couldn’t tell by Nessa’s tone whether she was giving a compliment or a dig.

  “This part of the castle is the most run-down, and we let it stay as dirty and smelly as possible during the war. We let it be known wolves frequented it at night. Dziadek even found some animal bones to scatter in here to scare off soldiers who had options, those who didn’t need to hide with us. Babcia had it cleaned out since. I think she wanted to erase as many bad memories as possible.