Chapter 12: The Medal

Nerina did not answer him.

She looked at my husband, and at the medal between her finger and thumb, and then at her brother.

"Papa said it came with me," she said slowly. "He said it was all I had from before."

"May I?" said Santo.

She lifted the chain over her head.

Her hand shook, and she laid the medal in his palm.

Santo turned it over.

On the back, cut into the black metal in small capitals, there was a single word.

CORVAIA.

"Read it," he said. "Please. Aloud."

Nerina bent over his hand.

"Corvaia," she said.

The old man who had laughed stopped moving.

Santo reached inside his jacket, and from an inner pocket he took out a small bundle wrapped in a plain white handkerchief.

He unwrapped it on the tablecloth.

It was a second medal, black, with a little anchor, and a chain gone dull with age.

He turned it over beside the first.

CORVAIA.

"My mother's," he said. "She wore this at her throat every day of her life."

"Your medal, Nerina, was made by the same jeweler in Trapani for her youngest child."

The silence in the room had changed.

It had edges now.

"I took this back seven years ago from the man who kept it for him," Santo said. "He doesn't keep anything now."

"What are you saying?" Massimo's voice was thin. "What is this?"

Santo did not look at him.

He was looking at Nerina, and his voice dropped so low that I leaned forward to hear it.

"You were one year old," he said.

"Eleven days before our family ended, I held you up on a step in front of the house and told you to look at the gulls."