Free Tomorrow's Vengeance by Marcia Talley

way to Rome! We got married right away. I didn’t even have time to rent a wedding dress. The next day we walked to the Red Cross where he signed me up as a GI wife so that I could get benefits, and then he had to leave and I didn’t see him again for almost a year. I got his letters, though. Every week he wrote me, although I’d get the letters in batches.
    â€˜But then, time passed and I hadn’t heard from Bruno for several months. I was worried he’d forgotten about me when the Red Cross sent a letter telling me to go to a certain hotel where I would wait with other GI brides for a boat to take us to America. There were maybe five hundred war brides and over one hundred children all crowded together on that ship. Some of us were seasick for the whole ten days, but all the hardships flew straight out of my mind when we sailed into New York harbor and I saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time. I stood on the deck and bawled my eyes out.’
    I scrabbled in my handbag, looking for a tissue. ‘Now you’ve made me cry,’ I sniffed, then blew my nose.
    â€˜Bruno was there to meet me, and his mother, too. She was a wonderful woman! She’d sent me a dress to wear for my “homecoming.” Other than that, I really brought nothing with me.’ She paused for a moment. ‘Except for …’
    We waited expectantly, but she didn’t finish the sentence. ‘Except for what?’ Naddie prodded.
    â€˜Before
Abba
was forced to sell, he saved one thing. It’s a portrait of me, painted when I was around four, holding my kitten, Merlino.’
    I was astonished. ‘How on earth did you get the painting out of Italy?’
    Izzy smiled. ‘
Abba
carefully removed it from the frame, wrapped it in a special canvas, and my mother sewed it into the lining of my suitcase. The painting’s hanging in my living room now. I’ll show it to you sometime.’
    â€˜I’d love to see it,’ I said.
    â€˜It’s lovely,’ Naddie said. ‘I never knew its history. Fascinating.’ Turning to Izzy, she asked, ‘Is the painting valuable?’
    Izzy shrugged. ‘It’s priceless to me, of course. I remember sitting for the artist, a flamboyant and rather scary woman named Clotilde Padovano. In the early part of the twentieth century, she was very much in demand as a portrait painter to the well-to-do. I don’t follow such things closely, but I read in the
Times
that one of her portraits was recently sold at auction in New York for a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.’
    I whistled.
    â€˜I’ll never part with
mine
, of course,’ she said.
    â€˜Nor would I, if it were mine,’ I said. ‘Not even if I were reduced to selling umbrellas on street corners.’
    Izzy laughed then picked up her handbag, preparing to go. As we got up to join her, I turned to Izzy again. ‘Izzy, I have a rude question.’
    â€˜Yes?’
    â€˜For lunch just now, you had calamari. Isn’t squid a non-kosher food,
treif
?’
    Izzy laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘I learned a long time ago, Hannah, that it is never safe to be Jewish. Maybe it was the years of living on the edge of being found out. Maybe it was the hours of kneeling on the cold floor of the convent at
matins
and
prime
. But, after I married Bruno, I converted. I’ve been a practicing Catholic ever since.’
    I accompanied my friends to the entrance of Blackwalnut Hall, hugged them both goodbye then headed off in the direction of the parking lot to collect my car.
    As I rounded the corner of the building I noticed two men squared off on the concrete apron outside the service entrance to the kitchen, looking for all the world like boxing bears. One had to be Raniero Buccho; nobody else at Calvert Colony had hair that impossibly blond. From his black-and-white uniform and the argument I’d overheard earlier, I guessed the other was probably the