It was a nice, if slightly cold day, so we decided to walk the forty or so minutes to Gavinana, meandering across the Ponte San Niccolò to Lungarno Francesco Ferrucci, a street that afforded us glimpses of the river every so often. Nina was dressed in some of the most casual clothes I’d ever seen her in. Under her cashmere coat, she had traded her typical designer dresses for a pair of tight, dark jeans and equestrian-style riding boots that were putting some less-than-innocent thoughts in my head. With her hair tied back and cheeks pinked from the breeze and (I hoped) a bit of happiness, Nina looked like she could have been a student again. But still, as ever, a perfect lady.
Eventually we turned off the main thoroughfare and came to a stop outside a nondescript apartment building a few blocks south of the river. The quaint restaurants and artisan shops of the central part of Florence had long turned into more practical places like hardware stores and supermarkets. Fewer of the charmingly crowded and semi-ancient Renaissance and neoclassical buildings; more newer structures made of brick or concrete that had more in common with my family’s house back home than the churches and converted palazzi that comprised so much of Florence’s older district.
“She’s on the third floor,” Nina murmured as we stared up at the U-shaped apartment building on Via delle Nazioni Unite.
I grabbed Nina’s hand, squeezed, then let it go. She needed to do this herself, not with me forcing her.
“I’m here,” I said. “You lead the way.”
We climbed the stairs at the far end of the courtyard to the apartment number scribbled on the scrap of paper Nina had been clutching for the last thirty minutes.
“You can do this,” she murmured to herself as she stared at the plain white door. Then she stood to her full height, straightened her chin, and knocked.
Footsteps shuffled immediately on the other side, and then the door opened. A pretty, slight woman with deep-set eyes and dark hair threaded with silver at the temples appeared, dressed casually but nicely in a pair of tailored brown pants and a simple blue sweater. She was holding a small orange dishtowel, as if she had come from cleaning the kitchen.
I swallowed. She could have been anyone from back home, any of the village who had raised me or my sisters in Belmont, who had shouted familiarly from across the street or shared Mass with us on Sundays. She could have been anyone in my family.
“Salve. Chi siete?” she asked, her sharp eyes flickering with inquiry as she looked us over.
Nina took a deep breath, her brow furrowed. “Um, hello. I mean, ciao, um, pronto. Siete Vilma Ros-Ross—”
I cringed at her poor, stuttering Italian. I wasn’t a perfectly native speaker by any means, but it was still painful to hear Nina crippled so badly out of nerves. She could manage a few phrases better than this.
“Buongiorno, signora,” I inserted myself quickly, continuing in Italian. “My name is Matthew Zola. We’re visitors from the United States. My friend would like to speak with you, please. Is there any chance you speak English?”
The woman nodded. “Yes, I speak English.” Her eyes darted suspiciously between us before settling back on Nina. “Who are you?”
I turned to Nina and tipped my head. She inhaled once more. Come on, baby, I thought. You can do this.
“Hello, Signora Bianchi—”
“Marradi,” the woman interrupted curtly. “Dr. Bianchi, he died almost ten years past. I remarried.”
Nina swallowed, then nodded, almost looking like she was in pain at the mention of her former lover. I did my best to ignore the twinge of jealousy in my gut—it had to be a sin to be envious of a dead guy, but here I was. I would probably always envy anyone who got those parts of Nina’s heart before I did. Especially when he didn’t deserve her.
“I apologize. Signora Marradi,” Nina corrected herself awkwardly. “My name is Nina de Vries. I knew your late husband, Dr. Bianchi. He—he was my professor when I was a student here. I, um, I wondered if you might have a moment to talk. About…about him.”
Something in Signora Marradi’s face stiffened when Nina said her name, and by the time she was done speaking, the woman’s entire body was straight as a board. It was obvious she had at least some idea of who Nina was to her deceased husband. I wondered how many other “students” of his had shown up at her door over the years.
“E tu?” She turned to me suddenly. “Anche tu conoscevi mio marito? O solo questa ragazza americana?”
So, she was back to Italian, clearly to alienate Nina. Well, I wasn’t having that.
“No, I didn’t know your husband, Signora Marradi,” I said in English. “I’m just a friend of Nina’s. But I promise you, what she has to say is important. Will you listen, please? We’ll only take a moment, or else we can return another time that is better for you.”
Signora Marradi’s jaw tightened visibly, and she looked like she wanted to tell us to leave. But finally, she stepped aside for us to enter her flat.
“Please come in,” she said, gesturing toward the small sitting area just inside the front door. “I will make us a coffee. And then we can…”—she trailed off as her gaze raked up and down Nina’s trembling form—“talk.”
“So that’s it,” Nina said sometime later as she finished the story of her involvement with Giuseppe Bianchi. “Olivia is ten now.”
Signora Marradi sat thin-lipped in a Victorian-style chair, holding her cup of now-cold espresso following Nina’s description of how she had met Giuseppe Bianchi, had an affair with him over the course of several months, and then departed home
