Siracusa Read Online Free PDF

the least. I took out her amethyst studs and replaced them with my diamonds.
    Surprisingly—I say surprisingly because I expected her to appreciate herself in the mirror—she hoisted herself onto the bureau.
    She sat there surveying the realm. Of course she wasn’t. I don’t know why I described her that way. She perched on top of the bureau until I was dressed and ready to go.
    Leaving the hotel, Snow looked both ways not once but several times. She always does that. I noticed Lizzie noticing that too before she saw me and looked away. It’s not as if she hadn’t seen it before, in London. Snow is always hesitant moving from inside to out. On the quietest, narrowest street my child acts as if she is crossing a busy four-lane highway.
    My hand in hers gives her security.
    Lizzie led the way, waving a map for all to see, calling attention to us as tourists. Has she never heard of blending in? She never “modulates,” April’s word when I described Lizzie shouting out turns as if we were a tour group from Pittsburgh. (She never did that in London, but we had all been there before and knew it quite well.) Finn flaked along by himself as usual. He is not what I would describe as the escorting type. In our restaurant he’s very good about making sure diners are happy. He buzzes from table to table, he has a knack for it, but when the three of us are out, I hold Snow’s hand and he trots alongside like a horse without a rider.
    Almost immediately we turned onto the Via del Corso.
    How misleading were those art books. Glorious photographs,a feast for the eye, not only of beauty but also of ancient civilizations, and then we visited and what did we find? That world was now barbaric in a modern way, crowded and cacophonous with Vespas and cars zipping every which way.
    Italians do not light their streets well. Their monuments, yes, but not their streets. While it wasn’t pitch dark, people were indistinct, shadowy, and mysterious until right in front of us. It reminded me of the Portland piers on a Saturday night, tons of frat boys, most drunk.
    I suppose you are speculating that I have passed my anxieties on to Snow, but I believe anyone would experience the Via del Corso that night as jarring and threatening. We were traveling against the crowd.
    Someone knocked into me. I lost Snow’s hand and spun in a panic. But Michael, gentleman to the rescue, tucked her arm in his as if she were quite grown up. He steered her out of the maelstrom over to a shop window. The dresses displayed, gowns I should say, were over-the-top and fairly ridiculous. One tangerine floor-length I remember in particular: its fabric too shiny to be chic, plunging neckline, and short sleeves puffed at the shoulder. The skirt fell in folds like heavy drapery and pooled at the bottom. Who would wear this, and where would they wear it? What Italian life did it reflect? Yet still, it was so over-the-top it was something out of a fairy tale. I pushed through to keep close to Snow. I didn’t want to miss a word.
    I stopped behind and a little to the side so they wouldn’t see my reflection. I didn’t want to intrude.
    “Someday I’d love to see you in a dress like that,” he said.“I’d take you to a ball and we would dance all night.” Then he leaned down and whispered in her ear.
    Later when she was in her pajamas sitting cross-legged on the bed, I asked what he’d said. She gave me her blank stare.
    “At the shop window, Snow. When you were looking at the fancy dresses. What did Michael whisper?”
    “He hates Lizzie.”
    “What? That’s what he said?”
    She began drawing in the journal I gave her to make memories.
    “Snow?” I said, but I knew it was fruitless.
    I’ve given considerable thought to Snow’s shutdowns. She drifts someplace else and it’s sudden and quite a powerful statement, a turtle pulling into its shell. Perhaps for her, the conversation is over or simply boring. She’s so bright, that’s possible. Once she