Free The Garden of Letters by Alyson Richman

abundance, Luca could spare an entire crate just for the Resistance’s cause.
    The light is changing in the room where they now sit. Shadows are flickering on the white walls. The window that faces the sea shows the horizon. An ink-colored brushstroke, just hovering over the water.
    She believed she would be safe in Liguria, near the Gulf of Poets, where, for years, artists and writers had escaped from the rest of the world, and in winter it was just the villagers and the sea. But Elodie has no sense of where she is.
    “You have been extremely kind,” she says as she places her hands in her lap. “I will not stay too long and be a burden to you. I will try to get to one of the islands as soon as I can.”
    Elba; Corsica; the islands farther west. The three boys who preceded her all said the same thing. The farther they go, the safer they think they will be. They think they can lose themselves in the sand, the blister of the sun. Angelo had helped every one of them, asking for nothing in return. There would always be another one, when the house was too empty and the silence became too loud.

    Elodie turns the key again and locks the door of her new bedroom. The noise is heavy and clunking, the sound of brass against wood. She realizes Angelo will interpret this sound as fear on her part. But that is not the reason she turns the key. She does it not because she fears him, but because she doesn’t want him to know what she is carrying.
    She knows he would not understand the loose pages of musical score. He would not have the ear or the breadth of musical knowledge to understand these notes on the page. Even if he could read music, he would not be able read these particular sheaves of paper like she can. To her, the hurried way the notes are written, the shakiness in parts of the handwriting tell another story. She can detect the fear in the melodies. But the amulet and the book are objects that connect her to Luca.
    These are things she carries. The story of how they each came into her hand is still locked deep within the channels of her mind.

TEN

    Verona, Italy
    J UNE 1943
    This much is certain: After Lena chastised her for wearing the yellow dress, Elodie wouldn’t be asking to borrow her mother’s clothes again. She returned home and immediately peeled off the dress.
    “I miss hearing you play,” her mother said gently. “Your father has been in agony all day. Won’t you help clear my head with something beautiful?”
    At first, Elodie wanted to resist her mother’s maneuverings. She didn’t need another person directing her actions, but her frustration caused her entire body to stiffen. She knew the music would be the only thing that could pacify her.
    Elodie unsnapped the case, withdrew her cello, and settled into a chair. For a second, there was a silent exchange between the girl and her instrument, the privacy upheld through a curtain of her black hair. Orsina held her breath until her daughter finally lifted her bow.
    She started with the main theme from the second movement toAmerican
String Quartet, and did not look up once to meet her mother’s approving gaze. She played with her head to the side and her eyelids closed.
    Orsina felt a sensation wash over her, as if she was moved by the current or pulled by an invisible tide. Within the poignancy of the notes, she sensed a plea for peace by the composer. She wondered if more people were exposed to beauty like this, would the fighting lessen? Would wars subside?
    If only things were that simple.
    She had been distracted all afternoon by the newspapers. The Allies had just bombed Sicily. She felt it in her bones: more bloodshed was to come.
    She wondered if she could convince her husband to move someplace safer, perhaps to pack up the household and move back to Venice. She could not imagine the Blackshirts who had brutalized him finding their way among the canals and cloak of fog.

    The time to travel from Verona to Venice was not terribly long, less than