The children were watching her closely. They weren’t used to seeing an adult needing their help.

“And you don’t know what to do?” Lucia asked her.

“No, I have no idea.”

“And that makes you scared?”

“Very.”

The girl glanced at her friends. Teresa could tell what she was looking for: their reassurance that she could keep going.

“I used to be scared, too,” she blurted out.

Mathias looked at her, and she went quiet. There wasn’t anything aggressive about his glance, something that might discourage her—it was just a look, nothing more. But it was the look of a leader, and that was enough.

Teresa acted like she hadn’t noticed.

“And now you’re not anymore?” she asked the girl.

She shook her head, her eyes now fixed on a piece of candy in the palm of her hand, but she didn’t reply. She was following an order after all.

“I want to find the person who did these horrible things,” Teresa went on. “But most of all, Mathias, I want to find your brother.”

He held her gaze without saying a word.

“Don’t you want him to come home?” she asked.

The boy’s lips were trembling now.

“Maybe he’s better off out there,” she heard him say.

Teresa noticed Marini’s body stiffen and hoped that he, too, would heed the boy’s unspoken command and remain quiet.

“Why would you think that?” she asked.

He was chewing on his fingernails now and seemed agitated. He didn’t want to talk to Teresa about it.

“I know you want to protect him, but he’s too little to be away from his mother for so long,” she explained. “And away from you. He needs you.”

Teresa didn’t mention their father. She had noticed the marks on the boy’s neck that he kept touching without even realizing it; his shirt collar couldn’t hide them. They were bruises, just like those his mother had on her arms.

But the boy was showing no signs of opening up, and Teresa could understand why: she was nothing but a stranger, and yet she somehow expected him to admit to his biggest, most painful secret. She felt selfish and tactless.

“There was once a person who hurt me,” she began, without giving too much thought to Marini.

The children were all looking at her now.

“It was someone I loved very much,” she continued. “Every time he did it, I would ask myself what I could have done to make him so angry.”

“And what had you done?” Lucia asked. She was definitely the bravest of her friends.

“Nothing,” Teresa answered. “There is nothing we can do—no matter how bad—that would justify someone hurting us. But it took me a while to figure that out.”

“Then what did you do?” Oliver asked.

“I got rid of him.”

“Did you kick him?”

Teresa laughed.