Free Rose by Jill Marie Landis Page A

their vows before the very priests who had sought to claim him for the church. Fearful of meeting them at first, Rosa soon found the priests were happy that Giovanni had finally found peace, for his heart had long been unsettled. In reality, his vocation had been his mother’s greatest wish, but not his own.
    They had not been so warmly welcomed when they returned to Corio to face his family. Signora Audi took to ceaseless weeping and prayer and refused to speak to either of them. Giovanni’s father threatened and shouted, and then he, too, wept as he offered them an old stone farmhouse that was little more than a pile of rubble on the side of a hill outside of the village.
    For three weeks she tried, as only a seventeen-year-old bride would, to make a home of the drafty pile of rock that was not fit for use as a cow shed. In their living quarters above the barn, Rosa did her best to please Giovanni. By the time summer ended and the chill nights of October sent winds scuttling over the Alps to rattle the wooden doors and seep through the stone walls, Giovanni had made the decision to leave for America.
    “You deserve more than this, Rosa,” he had said. “I’ll make a new life for us.” His dark eyes had shone with the dream and determination he felt. “We will have everything in America.”
    Now she was in America and she had nothing. Not even a drafty home on the mountainside.
    The memory of Guido’s taunting words was a haunting reminder that Giovanni’s death had irretrievably altered her life. Would she go back? There seemed to be no other choice. The big man, the marshal with the luminous eyes, had been adamant. Was it he who had brought her here? She wondered as she turned around and moved toward the bed again.
    Her knees were trembling. An intense pain pounded against her temples. She remembered she had not eaten since early morning, but the thought of food choked her. Perhaps it was nearly morning again; perhaps the dawn was about to bring a day filled with more doubt and uncertainty about her future. Where would she sleep when night came again? How could she go on?
    Rosa fought against the tears that threatened to overwhelm her. She shrugged helplessly, stared up at the ceiling, and swallowed. “You have him, God,” she whispered aloud in the darkness. “I hope you are happy now.” Then, thinking her words and thoughts must surely be blasphemous enough to call down more sorrow and bad luck, she crossed herself, sank to her knees, and sobbed out her sorrow.
    It was a while before her tears subsided, but when they did, Rosa pulled herself to her feet. Glancing down, she stared at the black dress, a pool of darkness in the filtered moonlight. The color of widows. She would wear it for the rest of her life. With unsteady hands she drew the dress away from her shoulders and pushed it off until it fell around her ankles. Stepping out of the velvet that encircled her feet, Rosa turned back the coverlet and stretched out on the cool, crisp sheet, men closed her burning eyes against the uncertainty that would come with the rising sun.
    A soft rapping at the door alerted Rosa to the fact that it was time to leave. The portal swung open to reveal the woman called Bertha Matheson, the proprietress of the boardinghouse who had curtly introduced herself earlier. The woman’s bulk should have attested to her culinary skills, but if Rosa’s early morning breakfast of runny eggs, burned biscuits, and ham slices so dry they resembled shoe leather was any indication of the rest of the fare, it would seem that only Bertha relished her own cooking.
    “That man’s at the door waiting to take you to the station.” The woman boomed out the announcement and stared at Rosa as if she were the oddest of creatures.
    “Grazie.” Rosa nodded in Bertha’s direction and straightened the high collar of her dress. She stooped to pick up her valise and paused before the mirror above the washstand to appraise her appearance. This