I’m finally revisiting the characters from The River City Chronicles nine years after their original timeline. I’ll be running the series weekly here on my blog, and then will release it in book form at the end of the run. Hope you enjoy catching up with all your faves and all their new secrets!
Today, Gio and Dante go to visit Gio’s mother’s grave in Bologna, and get quite a surprise…
< Read Chapter 46
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Chapter Forty-Seven
Moonrise
Gio got out of the bus, shouldering his heavy backpack. It had been a long trip. First the train ride, held in Imola for a couple hours due to some issue farther up the tracks. They finally made it into Bologna, where they stopped to grab a quick bite at the station, a place called Rosso Pomodoro, which, unlike the KFC and Burger King next door, at least seem to be homegrown Italian.
Dante had been like a little kid, his eyes wide, head darting in every direction. He must’ve traveled by train before, but it was his first time out on his own, without his mother. He was thrilled to see the world.
In fact, he kept wandering off like a puppy dog, chasing after one new thing after another. A tourist shop full of t-shirts. A beautiful woman who crossed his path. An African street vendor selling fashion knockoffs on a white sheet.
Gio had to keep a close eye on him so he didn’t get lost. Zia Valentina would never forgive him if he lost her oldest son. It was exhausting.
Now, after a bus ride out to the northwestern corner of Bologna, they were finally within striking distance of his mother’s grave.
The bus trundled off, leaving them alone on the side of the road in front of the Dolce Vita Bar. It was a quiet neighborhood, and the bus stop was actually pretty close to the cemetery.
“Is this the place?” Dante settled his own backpack on his shoulders and looked around. His eyes went wide. “Wait, this is where the Ducati Museum is?”
“I suppose.” He’d never really paid attention.
“Oooh. Can we go? Cugino? I love the Ducati. Vroom vroom!”
“Maybe later.” It was strange being back here, after all these years. The last time, he’d been numb, empty as the open sea—it had been just days after his mother’s death. This strange man from America had come to tell him that he was Gio’s father, and that he was about to take him away from everything that he had ever known.
“Not much to it.” His gaze alighted on the pastry shop. “Hey, want to get a chocolate—”
Gio grabbed him by the ear and turned him around. “Come on. Graveside visit now. More food later.”
“Ahi! What did you do that for?” Nevertheless, he followed Gio as his cousin stomped away down the sidewalk, back the way the bus had come from. “Where are we going?”
“To the cemetery.”
“But the bus just came from there.”
Gio sighed. He was tired of playing babysitter. “We passed the entrance a minute ago.” He pulled his phone and sent a quick text to his father. Just got to the cemetery. Will check in with you later.
It was after midnight in California, but his father was probably still awake. He was starting to miss his life, and his parents.
Dante caught up with him, huffing a little. “I barely remember this place. I was just a kid.” He lifted his pack up and resettled it on his shoulders. “Do you think about her a lot?”
Gio nodded. “Every day.” He was lucky. He knew it. He had two fathers who loved him, and a new life in America that was full of promise. But sometimes he wished he still lived here in Italia with his mother. Like something important. Something as vital to him as the air he breathed, had been stolen from him.
They reached a big pink church called Santa Marria Assunta, next to a broad concrete driveway and a narrower brick path that led through an old brick wall into what looked like a park. He checked his map. “I think this is it.” He felt a strange shiver of trepidation. They were here. There was no going back now. Not that I want to.
Dante frowned. “Wasn’t there a couple of white towers? They looked like nuclear reactors?”
“That’s on the other side. We came in that way for my mother’s funeral. But unless you want a long walk…”
“No, I’m good with this one. How old do you think that wall is?” And he was off to check it out.
It was an impressively old wall, full of scars and shadows of things that had once been in front of it or attached to it. Gio let him go. He couldn’t get far.
Across from the church was a small florist, perfectly positioned to sell flowers to anyone entering the cemetery. Temporary shelving obscured half the wall, covered with bright blossoms of all kinds—peonies, birds of paradise, carnations, roses, hollyhocks, baby breath, and many others he didn’t recognize. He poked his head into the interior. “Salve.”
A friendly looking woman with bright pink hair and green eyes smiled at him. “Auguri. What can I get you?”
“Do you have any white lilies? They were my mother’s favorite.”
A shadow crossed her face. “I am sorry. You look too young to have lost a mother.”
“It was nine years ago. I’ve just come back from gli Stati Uniti. I wanted… I needed to visit her.” To see her again. Though he didn’t say that part out loud.
“I think I still have some.” She ducked into the back, and returned a moment later, holding a dozen white lilies triumphantly. “Eccoli!”
“Grazie mille.” He pulled out his wallet. “What do I owe you?”
She squeezed his hand. “Niente. I was about to throw them away anyhow.” She looked up into his eyes. “I have a son about your age. I hope he cares as much about me when I’m gone as you do about your mother.” She pulled his head down and kissed his forehead, then patted his cheeks.
“That’s very kind of you.” Some son I am. I haven’t been back here in almost a decade.
“Di niente.” She waved him off, and turned back to her work, but not before he noticed the moisture around her eyes.
He retreated outside to find Dante on his knees next to the wall, picking at some of the grout between the bricks. He whistled. “Here boy.”
Dante looked up and blushed. “I was just trying to figure out when the wall was built. Prewar, I’d guess…” He fell in next to Gio and they passed through the gate together.
They followed the cracked pavement down a narrow road lined by Italian cypress. After a fork in the road, they passed a couple of markers with lists of names—Died in Imprisonment. Died from Illness. Died in the Fields; Died From Wounds.
“I think you were right about the wall.” He pointed at the dates on the markers, in Roman numerals. 1925 and 1928.
Dante grinned. “I knew it.” Then his expression turned somber as he read the names.
There were few other people out on the narrow road, and a car passed by only once, moving slowly as if in respect for this sacred place.
As they progressed between hundreds of markers on either side of the road, each topped with fresh flowers, Dante glanced at him repeatedly, as if he wanted to ask something but couldn’t work up the courage.
“What?” It came out sharper than he intended.
“It’s just… I can’t remember her. She was pretty, right? What was she like?”
Gio bit his lip. “I really don’t want to talk right now. Do you mind if we just walk in silence?” Flashes of her in those last few days ran through his head. Laying there on her deathbed, the spark that he remembered in her eyes slowly going out.
“Oh, sure. Sorry.” Dante sounded like a wounded puppy dog.
Gio immediately felt guilty. “Look, it’s not about you. I’m just… feeling a lot of things right now.”
“Oh, I understand. I felt the same way after we lost Zio Nicolo a couple of years ago.“ He lapsed back into silence, casting a guilty look at Gio.
Gio sighed again. “What happened to your uncle?” He didn’t remember Diego saying anything about him.
“He wasn’t really my uncle. Just a close friend of Mamma’s. He would come by at Christmas time and bring us all presents. He worked in the shipyards in Venice and there was some kind of industrial accident. It was a closed casket funeral.”
“Ouch! Did they say what happened to him?”
“No, but I think something really heavy fell on top of him. Someone said he was squashed flat as a piadina.”
Gio laughed in spite of himself. “I’m sorry. I just am picturing this piano falling on top of the poor man, like in the cartoons…”
“Seriously? It’s not funny.” But Dante was having a hard time suppressing a grin.
“No, it’s not.” He giggled, though, and soon they were both laughing so hard that tears formed at the corners of their eyes.
An old woman in a red jacket with a cane gave them a withering look. “Peccato!”
That just made them laugh even more.
At last, freed by the unexpected mirth, Gio wiped his eyes and took a deep breath, feeling lighter. They’d reached another gate, this one much newer and more imposing, with concrete columns faced with travertine or marble and fancy wrought-iron grill work in-between. Even Dante seemed awed into silence by the somber place.
“We’re here.” Gio had printed out a map of the cemetery, with his mother‘s gravesite marked on it. He pulled out the map and looked at it, orienting himself. Then he took a deep breath, and then stepped through the gate.
It was cooler inside, as if he’d stepped into another world.
He followed his map, turning left and proceeding with Dante along the inside wall of the cemetery. They soon came to a row of what looked like tiny houses on their left, set back from the walkway a dozen feet. Houses of the dead. Tombs for some of the richer permanent residents of this place. Gio shivered, wishing suddenly that Diego were here with him.
“It’s like a little city,” Dante whispered.
Gio nodded. “City of the dead.”
The tombs thinned out, and soon another structure loomed. It was an old house, a stately two-story affair surrounded by old trees. It was in poor repair, all the windows broken out, and the rooftop gaping open in several places.
“That’s odd.” He didn’t remember seeing it the last time he’d been here, but then again, he’d been numb to everything.
“The house?”
Gio nodded.
“It’s probably protected. When they built this place, they had to leave it there.”
“Protected? Why?” It was in ruins.
Dante shrugged. “They like to keep all the old things.”
They passed the old haunted looking house and turned down the next lane. Gio checked his map. “Almost there.”
There were a few other people visible in the cemetery—a young couple had a gravesite just off the narrow, paved road, leaving flowers for a loved one. A little farther on, a gardener was mowing part of the grass. And a little green ped zip by, fleeing the cemetery as if being chased by zombies.
“I think her gravesite is over there.” He pointed past the young couple, toward a tall oak tree. “We buried her next to the tree, but out under the sky where the moon would find her.” He hurried across the grass, scanning the grave markers, and at last found what he was seeking.
Luna Mazzocco
7 Aprile 1969 – 14 Ottobre, 2015
He knelt, brushing away the dirt and bits of cut grass and leaves that had settled across her marker, and laid down the flowers. “Ciao, mamma.”
A shadow fell across the grave.
Gio looked up, expecting to see his cousin.
“Chi diavolo sei?”
< Read Chapter 46
Like what you read? if you haven’t tried it yet, check out book one, The River City Chronicles, here.