The Blue Dress Sisters

CHAPTER 53: AMERICA

The uniformed men reached Giacomo, aided by the ship's passengers who had trapped him to hand him over. To Delilah's shock, they began dragging him off the ship—him alone.

“Let me go! I have to get off too!” she screamed, struggling against the grip of two strangers who held her back.

“Delilah, it’s okay! Go to America!” Giacomo shouted as he stopped resisting the soldiers. “We don’t know what will happen after the war! Go and make a better life!”

“No!” Delilah cried desperately, her voice breaking. “Let me off the ship, please! Take me too, I beg you!”

But no one listened.

“I’ll be fine, my love!” Giacomo called from the dock, forcing a reassuring smile even as the guards dragged him further from her sight. “You’re strong, Delilah—you can make it! I love you, Delilah! I’ll find you when the war is over, I promise!” When he said this last part, Delilah could no longer see him, he had disappeared behind the wall of a building. "I swear it!”

“No, let me go! Please!” she wailed, her cries mingling with the hundreds of voices around her. Tears streaked through the dust on her face, carving pale lines down her cheeks. “Giacomo, I love you!” she screamed into the chaos, hoping he could still hear her. A confession born of surrender.

The ship began to move, and the crew started pulling up the gangway connecting the vessel to the dock.

“I’ll wait for you! I promise!” Delilah called out as the ship pulled farther from the shore.

Only when the ship had left the port did the people restraining her let go. She fell to her knees, overwhelmed by the realization that it was too late to jump into the sea and try to reach Giacomo. Her anguished sobs echoed in the air.

She pounded the wooden deck with her fist, her whole body aching with pain and despair. She didn’t know if Giacomo would be all right, didn’t know if she would be all right. How could she possibly endure what was ahead, entirely on her own?

“I want to get off!” she screamed, running to the ship’s railing in a final, futile attempt to catch one last glimpse of Giacomo. But through the blur of her tears, she could see nothing.

“You’ll be alright, child,” said a man with a thick rural accent. “It’s just a little over a month until we reach the Americas. After that, you can start fresh in one of the big cities of the Americas, with that Parisian charm.”

Delilah shut her eyes, trying to calm her racing thoughts.

“I wanted to join the army,” she muttered.

“Do you think you could have protected him there? You both would’ve died. You’re not a heroine from an adventure novel.”

The words shattered what was left of her heart. She took a deep, shaky breath, trying to steady herself.

If only she could be like the heroines of her beloved novels… With their cleverness, strength, and bravery, she could have outsmarted the soldiers. She could have escaped with Giacomo, kept him safe from the war, and ensured they stayed together.

Perhaps she could even stop the cruel, relentless people who waged wars, tearing lives apart on the battlefield.

In her mind, Delilah had often imagined herself fighting, shutting the mouths of those who didn’t believe she was capable of doing things, facing rifles and winning.

But this was real life. And she was no heroine. The only thing she could do was accept her cruel fate.

The reality was that the eloquence and intelligence of her heroines didn’t stop cannonballs. It was human bodies that did, bodies that would later lie lifeless in the midst of the battlefield.