Free The Secret of the Glass by Donna Russo Morin

scraped against all that burned in her life. The thoughts skipped in and out, one upon the other, building in consequence and momentum.
    What was wrong with her father? What would happen to them all if he were ill? The letter delivered this evening, the offensive words upon it, rose up in her mind’s eye, dancing around her head like evil specters in an unearthy nightmare. The process had begun; she would be married. If they lost Zeno, her husband would, by rights, take ownership of the glassworks and all its profits. He would hold the fate of her family in his hands. Who was this man? Why did he want her? He would care for Mamma and Nonna, no doubt—or was there? Would he see Oriana and Lia married or would he shunt them off to a convent and erase them from his concern?
    Layer upon layer of questions piled up in her mind, voice upon voice screamed within it, vying for her terrified attention. She shook her head in denial once, then again, then back and forth and back and forth. She could not, would not accept this fate for her family. Zeno was still young, not fifty for another few months.
    “He’s just coming down with a fever, or…or a cold,” Sophia said aloud, as if to hear the words would make them so. “All will be well.”
    But to her own ears, her words sounded unconvincing.

Five
     
    T he royal blue and gold gondola belonging to the da Fuligna family waited for them as they stepped off the barge. Sophia lumbered along behind her parents as they crossed the fondamenta . Clad in her finest gown, a simple but elegant buttermilk silk that tapered at the waist and revealed the upper curves of her full breasts, her body felt as disconcerted as her mind.
    “Let’s ride within the felze , shall we?” her mother suggested, her voice ringing with forced frivolity as she tried to help her daughter brave this perilous journey. “I have never been in one and it will be cooler.”
    The reticent gondolier helped them onto the craft with silent reverence, a stark contrast from the oarsmen who had driven them at the festival. This man was a servant of the da Fulignas; it was not his place to entertain. The copper-haired man leaned before them with a bow, pulling back the navy brocade of the canopy entrance and holding it aloft for them as they bent low and entered. Sophia sat alone on a cushioned side bench while her parents shared a larger one against the back drape.
    Their bodies lurched as the gondola was launched. Sophia felt the ripples of the water pass beneath the wood at her feet. She heard the oar’s soft splash as it dipped into the water, again and again, like the ticking of a clock on a sleepless night; louder and louder it reverberated in her ears. The four windowless sides of the cloth cabin seemed to draw closer around her. The dramatic coiffure of pinned-up, bejeweled braids felt tighter on her head. She took a breath but it wasn’t enough. Her chest constricted, her throat narrowed.
    “I cannot breathe,” she whispered. Leaning forward she threw open the drape and rushed out. The gondola swayed under her sudden, jerky motion. With little grace, she flounced down on the bench just outside the baldachin. Seconds passed before her parents joined her, sitting beside her, one on each side. Without words, for there were none that would suffice, her father put an arm around her shoulder; her mother took her hand.
    When they turned onto the wide Grand Canal, gondole passed them on each side, their drivers singing, their passengers talking and laughing, but the Fiolarios continued on in silence, as mute and subdued as their subservient gondolier. Sophia contemplated the beauty of her surroundings with a contemptuous stare, as if seeing the manure that fertilizes the flower instead of the bloom itself.
    Where once there stood only huts of wood and wattle, the magnificent palazzi dominated both sides of Venice’s main thoroughfare, their colorful stone façades of lime and ochre, tracery ornamentation, and open