Maybe they were wandering along the cobblestone streets of the most romantic city in the world, but Rachel was still feeling a little woozy from yesterday’s so-called scenic cruise. Part of her was back on the gondola being pelted with rain. The cut on her cheek was tight and sore. And then there were those shrill, unsettling voices by the Bridge of Sighs, voices she couldn’t quite place and couldn’t quite forget.
“Can you believe that storm?” her mom said. “The gondolier said he’d never seen anything like it.”
Her dad nodded. “We’re lucky we’re still here, enjoying our last day in Venice. Right, Rachel?”
“Right,” she mumbled, thinking “enjoy” might be too strong a word. “Survive” was more like it.
“Oh look, Joe!” Her mother was peering over her guidebook at a sign in a shop window. “Funny, it’s not here on the street map. ‘Maria’s Treasures.’ And it’s the first sign I’ve seen in English.”
Her dad glanced at the tacky gold lettering. “You don’t think they’re trying to attract tourists with some loose foreign silver jingling around in their pockets?”
Her mother dug one hand into her jacket, rattling her change. “Jingle, jingle. Come on, Rachel. We’re going on a treasure hunt.”
It looked like an ordinary souvenir shop from the outside with the usual glass gondolas and brightly colored fish in the front window. But the way things were going... “You, first,” she said.
Her mom cracked the ancient wooden door open slowly enough to give it that haunted house creak, and Rachel stepped in, expecting the worst. But as her eyes adjusted to the softer light, she found herself wondering how she could ever have imagined something lying in wait for her here.
Tiffany lamps cast a warm, inviting glow over watercolor paintings of the Venice bridges and canals. The shelves were lined with miniature gondolas and blown-glass dolphins, roses made from Venetian glass beads, and even a tiny replica of the Doge’s Palace. But what caught her eye most were the water globes. There were dozens of them, polished and shiny like crystal balls, only with figurines inside—sailors, farmers, gondoliers, children—all frozen in time, waiting for her to pick up their glass containers, turn them upside down, and release the snow, or the birds, or the fairy dust that would come drifting down in slow motion. “Awesome!” she murmured. “I’ll take one of everything.”
“Me, too.” Rachel’s mom was over at the jewelry counter, looking at a necklace. A delicate golden ball hung from its chain. She opened it, and found room for a cameo-sized picture inside. “Oh here, Rachel, look at this—isn’t it lovely?”
Rachel rolled the golden ball around on her palm, admiring the tiny images of seagulls engraved on its surface. “It’s perfect,” she agreed.
“Perfect for you,” said her mom. “Let me buy it for you.” She set it down on the counter, giving Rachel a warm smile. “Now you just have to figure out whose picture to put in it.”
Rachel gave her mom a hug. It was so like her to think of Rachel whenever she went shopping and to find just the right thing. It was tiny, yet so intricate. There must have been some special magic behind the making of it. Rachel smiled. She wasn’t going to tell her mom yet, but she knew exactly whose picture she was going to put in there.
Rachel’s dad had gone over to the window display. He picked up a globe with a young boy gazing through a telescope. “Look at this one.” When he turned it over, a shower of sparkling stars flooded the globe.
“And look at this.” Her mom was holding a globe with a gondolier in it, steering a gondola. “Looks like our friend from yesterday, Rachel.”
"Friend"? "Assassin" was more like it. Rachel scarcely glanced at it. The last thing she wanted was something to remind her of being nearly swept out to sea. She picked up a globe with a young girl inside, blowing on a dandelion. When she turned it upside down, hundreds of little dandelion puffs swirled around the globe. “How about this one?”
Her dad laughed. “Just one? Pick two or three, anyway. Can you imagine how these would go over at home? They’d sell out like hot cakes.”
Her mom gave him a playful pout. “And I thought your heart belonged to me. It’s still in that little store of yours, even when you’re thousands of miles away from it.”
He put his arm around her. “Have you forgotten, my love? It’s that little store of mine that paid for our romantic trip over here.”
“I know, I know.” Her mom sighed and picked up another globe—a girl and boy on a bridge. As she turned it over, tiny seagulls scattered around them, falling like snowflakes.
“That’s you and me,” he said softly, and they smiled at each other in a way that had Rachel rolling her eyes again.
Then a clinking sound from the back of the store startled her, and she turned to find an elegant woman slipping through a glass-bead curtain. She was tall, extraordinarily tall. She had the most dazzling sea-green eyes, raven black hair, and porcelain skin that Rachel had ever seen. Everything about her was extreme, even her beauty. She was looking at Rachel’s dad with a smile that could have lit up Venice on a dark night.
Rachel’s dad nodded politely at her. Unlike Rachel, he didn’t seem at all impressed by her. But Rachel could tell that her mother had noticed. The radar had definitely turned on. Her eyes were wide open, and she seemed to be watching, waiting for something unpleasant to happen.
It wasn’t just that her dad was good looking. He was. But he also had this sensitive air about him that made the women go all soft and syrupy. Not that her mom wasn’t pretty. She was. She just didn’t have the confidence to go with it. If it wasn’t in some how-to, recipe, self-help or guidebook, she didn’t know what to do. Not at all like this lady who came out of those beads like Cleopatra.
“Good afternoon-a,” said the woman, looking straight at her dad. “Do you see anythin’ you like-a?” Her Italian accent added a soft exotic music to her voice.
Rachel’s dad waved his hand around the store. “Oh, a few things. Quite a few, actually.”
“You’re very kind.” In a few swift steps, she had crossed the store and was right in front of Rachel’s dad, every bit as tall as he was, making her mom look small and vulnerable beside her. Rachel had a sudden urge to go stand by her mom as if to defend her, as the woman stretched out long, elegant fingers toward her dad. “I am Lilah Benici,” she announced serenely. “My Aunt Maria owns the shop, but I will do what I can to look after you.” Her words were suddenly so perfectly clear and without accent that Rachel wondered if she’d only imagined it before.
“Actually, I have a store of my own back in America,” her dad said, as they shook hands. Then he pulled out his wallet and offered her one of his business cards.
“In America?” Lilah’s green eyes got greener as she opened them wide and took his card. “Oh, how wonderful for you! I have always wanted to go to America.”
“We’ve been very happy there,” Rachel’s mom said, speaking up at last.
“Yes, yes we have,” said her dad and put his arm around her affectionately. “This is my wife, Serena.”
“Enchantez, as the French say.” Rachel couldn’t help noticing the smile wasn’t quite so blinding this time. She watched Lilah take in her mother’s windblown hair, fading lipstick, and travel-wrinkled skirt. Her expression seemed to say, “There, there, dear. I’m sure he must see something in you.” Then she went back to concentrating on Rachel’s dad. “And you are—?” She glanced at his business card. “Joe?”
He nodded. “Joe Windover.”
“Enchantez, Joe Windover,” she repeated as if that were the most fascinating name she’d ever heard. “Well then, Joe, I must give you one of my special cards.”
She went behind the cash register counter and took out a small box. It looked like a miniature treasure chest. Rachel moved just close enough to peer inside. It was full of business cards, but they all had different pictures on them. There was a gondolier on one, a flock of seagulls on another. Then she saw the one with the girl blowing on the dandelion, and decided the cards were also some kind of catalog of ideas for all the glass globe figurines.
Lilah sorted through a handful of them until she came to a picture of the Bridge of Sighs. She pulled that one out and sniffed it. “Aah,” she said, “this will do nicely for my American guests,” and presented it with a kind of flourish, like a magician showing off one of her props. Rachel was struck by the color of the card, a kind of rose pink that darkened as it touched her dad’s hand—a trick of the light perhaps, or the shadows in the shop. “Please,” she said, coyly. “As a businessman, tell me what you think... It’s scented.”
Her dad put his nose to the card and inhaled while her mom squeezed her guidebook so tight, Rachel was pretty sure if it could talk, it would be screaming by now. “Aah,” he said, echoing Lilah. “A wonderful scent. Like the sea air on a warm night. Try it, Serena.”
Rachel’s mom bent over it stiffly, wrinkled her nose, and shook her head. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Pity.” Lilah aimed a small, secret smile at Rachel’s dad as if to say, “Well, at least we have something in common.”
Rachel noticed her dad’s cheeks were flushed. Was he warm or embarrassed? What had come over him? He seemed sort of glassy-eyed and goofy now, as if the sea air had gone to his head.
She turned to Rachel. “Is this your lovely daughter?”
Rachel cringed. She was many things: gawky, awkward, skinny-boned, chubby-cheeked. Her hair had all the body of cooked spaghetti, and there was a mole on her chin the size of Miami. Lovely? Now she definitely smelled a rat.
Her dad was no help. “It is, yes. Rachel. Lovely.” He went back to sniffing the card. Rachel was tempted to snatch it away from him, tear it up. Normally it wouldn’t have bothered her, but in Lilah’s case, with her gobbling eyes and gothic hair, and her mother squeezing the ink out of her guidebook, it just didn’t seem right.
“Well then,” Lilah was saying, “now that we’ve all gotten to know each other, what can I do for you?”
Rachel’s dad put the card carefully away in his wallet and picked up a water globe. “I’ll take three dozen of these, to start.”
“Three? Three dozen?” said her mother, practically choking. “Dear, don’t you think—”
“All right, four then. My final offer,” said her father, stubbornly. He pressed on, handing Lilah his credit card, before her mom could even finish her sentence. “Then if things go well, as I’m sure they will, I’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, yes of course,” said Lilah. “In touch. How wonderful.”
‘Wonderful’? For whom? Rachel wondered. She didn’t care how beautiful this woman was. Something about her wasn’t right.
Her dad, on the other hand, seemed to think that everything was just fine. “Rachel,” he rattled on, “you pick out one that you like, plus another five for the store. Serena, you do the same. There now, that’s one dozen. And I’ll take this boy with the telescope, the fisherman, and two others. Now let’s see...” He picked up one of the other globes and examined it.
“Very good.” Lilah rubbed her hands in a way that made Rachel think of an undertaker. A very beautiful undertaker. “Just put the ones you’ve chosen on the counter over there, and I’ll wrap them up. It shouldn’t take more than a half hour. I’ll have my dau—my niece help me.”
She corrected herself so seamlessly, nobody but Rachel seemed to notice she’d almost said “daughter”. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, although Lilah didn’t exactly strike her as the motherly type.
“Very good,” said her father, echoing Lilah. He put six more globes on the counter. “Perhaps you can choose some. We’ll go for a walk while we’re waiting.”
“Ah, of course,” Lilah said, smiling. “You’ll find that way the most scenic.” She pointed towards the bridge down the street.
“Thank you. Thank you,” her dad said, as if Lilah had just given him two weeks worth of her income instead of the other way around.
Rachel watched her mother’s cheeks redden, could almost hear the blippety-blip of her radar gone mad. Still she said nothing. There was a soft, clinking sound at the back of the shop.
Rachel turned quickly and saw the glass-bead curtain sway slightly, as though someone were behind it, watching them. She peered into the alcove behind the curtain, and the first thing she noticed was the eyes, green and glowing like a cat’s. It was a girl about Rachel’s age, her hair so blonde it seemed almost silvery white. With those same unearthly eyes, Rachel decided it must be Lilah’s niece. She was arranging red and blue bottles on the shelves behind her—or pretending to—because she kept stopping and turning, and her gaze always seem to come to rest on Rachel.
Rachel nudged her father’s arm, and hissed into his ear, “Come on, Dad, let’s get out of here.” She couldn’t explain it, but she felt if they stayed any longer, they were all going to be sucked into some kind of black hole in the back of the shop— her dad, head first.
She fairly ran to the front door, and was just yanking it open when a huge woman burst in, filling the doorway, nearly trampling Rachel. She was wearing a white peasant blouse on top of layer upon layer of swirling red satin that billowed about her legs, like sails around the mast of a pirate ship. Long ropy things dangled from her like snakes: a braided golden cord around her middle; silver chains from her neck; huge loops from her pierced ears. Her hair was ghost-white, her cheeks wind-burned and crisscrossed with blue, spider veins.
Feeling suddenly tiny and insignificant, Rachel took more than a few steps back. This woman didn’t merely walk, she advanced. But as she passed, Rachel realized that her eyes were the same exquisite sea-green as Lilah’s. They didn’t glow like Lilah’s or the ones behind the glass curtain, but they were exquisite all the same. The woman seemed not even to notice Rachel or her family. She sailed past all of them, and with one great sweep of her arm, flung open the curtain, and disappeared into the back room.
Rachel’s dad pulled his collar up around his neck, as if protecting himself from the wake of her passing. “That, I take it, is the aunt,” he said. “Well it’s a good thing we got the niece.”
“Is it?” her mother said. Rachel wasn’t so sure, either.
As they left the shop, Rachel took her mother’s arm. Something about both of those strange women had left her feeling unsettled. Lilah was so exotic and unreal, and the aunt was so...well...billowing.
Then there were the eyes behind the curtain watching them. If that was Lilah’s niece, where was the girl’s mother? Did she look like Lilah too? Did they all have those remarkable, penetrating eyes? That same ability to make you feel you weren’t just being watched, but studied?
Some dark cloud hovered at the back of her mind. She had no words for it yet, but it was something like worry, some vague, bad feeling. It was almost like she had been turned upside down like one of the globes, and now thousands of little dark clouds were swirling through her mind...
“Well, that was entertaining,” said her dad, as he closed the shop door.
Her mother ripped open her guidebook so roughly she nearly tore out a page. “Is that what you call it?” she said. “A few other words come to mind: like ‘sly’, ‘devious’, ‘cunning.’”
Her dad turned on her, his face full of surprise. He looked almost hurt. “Really, Serena. Those are a lot of words, considering you just met her. I’m sure she’s harmless. She’s excited about doing business in America, that’s all.”
“Well, let her get excited with somebody else’s husband.” She buried her nose in her guidebook.
“I believe you’re jealous.” He flashed his goofy, lop-sided smile at her, the one that made waitresses and flight attendants go weak at the knees.
She peered over her book at him, trying to look stern. “I believe you’re crazy.”
Rachel could tell she was softening, and that meant her parents were on the verge of getting mushy again. She didn’t think she could take that right now. Not with her stomach lurching. It was like she was back in the gondola.
“Uh—Mom?” she said. “Do you suppose there are any normal stores around here? Like ones that sell chocolate?”
“Honestly, Rachel. Chocolate? Is that what we traveled 6,000 miles to find?” She clucked her tongue disapprovingly and went back to her guidebook. “Aha!” she said, after scanning a few pages. “Here’s something better. The Bridge of Sighs.”
Something better? That was definitely a matter of opinion. What she wouldn’t give for a Milky Way. A bag of M&M’s would do nicely.
Her dad started walking faster, putting even more distance between them. “So that’s why she sent us in this direction. Today we get to see it on foot.”
“We can’t get to it directly from here,” her mother told him. “It’s all closed in. But we can see it from this next footbridge.”
Rachel’s dad was already coming up on it. She hurried to catch up with him, yet hated to leave her mother behind, even by a few steps. Something about this part of town was creeping her out. And it wasn’t just the voices she’d heard.
“Come on, Mom,” she called back.
“In a minute.” Her mother stopped briefly to study the entry in the guidebook. “Here it is. Just what the gondolier told us yesterday. ‘Legend has it the sighs came from convicted criminals as they passed over the bridge into the prison, leaving their freedom behind.’”
“I’ve heard another legend,” her dad said, finally slowing down. “It says the sighs are from all the young lovers who’ve embraced on the bridge.”
Her mom gave her dad a quick look and turned to Rachel. “Which do you think it is, honey?”
Rachel shrugged. “It might be something else, altogether. Who knows? Tiny children, maybe, even...” Her voice trailed off.
Her mother’s eyes grew wide. “Like elves?” She smiled, patting Rachel on the head like she was a puppy. “We’re a little south of Santa’s Village here, honey. Trust Rachel to outdo us with her imagination.”
“Indeed.” Her dad’s voice was all soft and dreamy. Not like her dad. Not like a businessman. What was it about this place? What was it about that shop?
Her mom went back to the guidebook. “Yes, this is the “Ponte di Paglia,” the Bridge of Straw,” she was saying. “And from here we get a perfect view of the Bridge of Sighs, ‘Ponte di Sospiri’.”
“‘Ponte di Sospiri’,” murmured her dad. “Sounds like a song. Looks just like the picture on the card Lilah gave us.” He leaned over the railing, chin in his hands, gazing at the covered Bridge of Sighs like he was Romeo, and Juliet was stuck inside it.
“Dad,” said Rachel, really getting worried now, “are you okay?” She was still waiting for him to answer when a flood of tourists burst out of the nearby town square, the Piazza San Marco. Behind them, she could hear a marching band. Rachel turned to find it rounding the corner, headed straight for them. Trumpets, trombones, drums, the raucous cries of children pounded in her ears, along with the noisy buzz of the tourists and pedestrians following the band.
They all converged at the bridge, swirling around Rachel and her parents like seagulls. Raw panic rose in her throat. She turned to reach for her mother, but all she saw was a sea of bobbing, unfamiliar faces. Her father, too, was out of sight. She shoved her way through the crowd crying, “Mom! Dad!” But her voice was lost in the din of the marching band. She whirled around, nearly losing her balance. Her parents were nowhere to be seen. She was lost, lost in a swirling sea of strangers. The bridge seemed to be rising up under her, tilting. She reached for the railing. Then she saw the guidebook, its crisp pages fluttering in the breeze like a bird whose wings had just been clipped...
When Rachel awoke, she was back in the hotel room. Her father was holding her hand. His eyes had that distant look in them as though he were in some kind of trance. Rachel tightened her grip on her father’s hand.
“Mom!” she cried. “Where’s Mom?”
Her dad shook his head in a way that made Rachel’s heart lurch. “That’s what we’re trying to find out, angel. We’ve been looking all over town. The police are working as hard as they can. They’ll find her.”
Rachel pictured her mother, lost and wandering the streets. She must be cold by now. Lonely, frightened, and hungry. Just like Rachel. Oh, how she wanted her mother!
“Let’s go out and look for her!” she begged him.
He shook his head slowly. “I’ve been out. For hours. We don’t know the city, Rachel. The police do. They’re looking. They’re looking right now, and they won’t stop until they find her.”
“The shop,” she said, desperately. “Did they go to that shop?”
“That was the first place they tried. Lilah couldn’t tell them anything. She probably got lost down one of the side streets. There are so many. They all look alike. Venice is not a big town. She’ll eventually find her way back, or the police will help her. Either way, she’ll be back soon. I know she will, pumpkin.”
“Promise me, Daddy. Promise she’ll be back. Promise!”
He bent to hug her and she hung on so tight, she squeezed the tears right out of him.
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