When the first correspondence arrived in the box on Pleasant Valley Road, it wasn’t from any of the duke’s family. Rather, it was from Ofelia’s sister, Emerika, addressed to me. She had come to stay with Ofelia in the months after Sveva was born and had quickly assumed a friendship and familiarity with me. She wrote that she wanted to scold me for having forgotten so soon about her – a distant flirt, she called either herself or me, I wasn’t sure. She imagined my Canadian attire was a short pleated dress with high boots like the girls of the Wild West. “Please say it’s so!” I could practically hear the delight in her voice, see her swinging her full skirts, winking, doing all those very animated things she had done at Ofelia and the duke’s residence in Rome.
Emerika asked after Sveva and
