The Golden Hour by Margaret Wurtele Page B

somehow lost touch with who he was. “No, honestly, he doesn’t even know I have a brother.”
    “Well, don’t. And stay as far away from him as you can. I am serious, Giovanna.”
    I turned my back. “I promise I won’t mention you to him, not ever.” I turned to face him. “And I really, really want to help. I’ll come back, right here, at the same time next week. I’ll bring as much as I can carry.”
    Then he looked at me, raising his eyebrow the way he always did when he thought he’d won a fight. It made me mad. I was the one helping, wasn’t I?

    Now my days were too short. I spent all my time thinking about whom I could trust, where I could find clothes and food without endangering Giorgio or me. At the school I went through the motions, but I couldn’t concentrate on playing with the children or on reading their compositions. I even forgot now and then to think about the officer Klaus.
    I went back to Catarina’s on Monday afternoon. I had expected to find her out in the garden, but instead she was sitting in a wooden rocker in the kitchen, staring dully at the floor. Ever since Pietro’s death, she had had moments like this. She seemed to close up, to curl in upon herself like a bulb in winter. There was a sheen on her cheeks where tears had recently dried. She looked up slowly and nodded a greeting.
    I pulled up another chair, sat knee to knee with her. “Catarina, I’m so sorry.” I offered my hand, and she took it with what looked like gratitude. “What can I do?”
    “Nothing, dear. I’ll be fine. I was just remembering that Pietro’s birthday is coming up next month. He would have been twenty-two, a true adult.”
    “Catarina, listen to me.” I leaned in close and lowered my voice. “Have you saved any of his clothes?”
    She sat there, rocked a few times slowly. “Of course I have. They’re so precious to me. I get them out sometimes and smell them, hoping just to catch a little of his scent. The soft shirts I think are especially good that way, but everything reminds me of him.”
    “Do you have any of his old uniforms?”
    “Well, I could look. I did keep a whole duffel bag of lighter-weight clothes he left here when he went to the Russian front.”
    I hesitated. I hated to risk letting anyone in on Giorgio’s and my secret, but Catarina could be an important ally, not to mention a source of critical supplies.
    I took a deep breath and then told her about my meeting with Giorgio. I spared no details, filling her in on the state of his clothes, his missing bootlace, his hollow cheeks. As I talked, I could see Catarina perk up. Her eyes sharpened, snapped back to the present. The old Catarina—bustling, practical, nurturing—was reemerging. She promised to go through Pietro’s things over the next few days, even to give me the duffel bag itself. She agreed to bake some extra loaves of bread on Saturday.
    “I think it’s better that we keep this from Tonino, don’t you?” Catarina asked. “I don’t want to widen the risk of Giorgio being discovered.”
    “Well, maybe…but I trust him totally.”

    On Tuesday, Violetta and I were on our way into town to buy some bread and cheese for a picnic lunch. When we stopped to admire the wildflowers, poppies, and blue flax that grew along the road, I asked her, trying to sound casual, “If one of the patients at the clinic dies, what happens to his clothes?”
    She looked at me oddly. “Where did that come from?”
    “Oh, I’ve just been thinking about things. I…I don’t know.I’ve been looking for something more to do, something for the war effort, and I thought maybe I could take the old clothes and make things for the children out of the fabric.”
    She laughed. “But you don’t even know how to sew.”
    “I’m sure Catarina would be willing to teach me.”
    “Well, if the soldier is Italian, maybe lives near here, and if the clothes are in one piece, usually we send them to his family. They like to have them as a