“I never used to be like this,” she confessed. “Jumping at my own shadow, my heart pounding at every creak on the stairs, always wondering and worrying if today is the day I’ll learn that my parents are lost. If someone will come to tell me Nico has been captured, or hurt, or . . .” She could not give voice to the last, and most terrifying, possibility.

“There’s no shame in being afraid, my dear. Even the bravest men are frightened at times.”

“So how do I bear it?”

“Simply by bearing it. You already know what it is to send him away with your blessing. You already know how painful it is to wait for his return.”

“I do, and I know I mustn’t stop him from going. I know that others will suffer without his help. But . . .”

“Go on.”

“I can’t help wishing he would stay,” she admitted. “It’s wrong of me, I know.”

“It isn’t. Who among us doesn’t long to keep our loved ones close by? But only think—what sort of man would he be if he did stay? If Nico sat by and did nothing, if he told himself the injustices he witnessed weren’t his concern, would you love him as you do now?”

“No,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t recognize that Nico.”

She loved him because he had chosen to do what was right. She was alive, and safe, because he had refused to look the other way. Father Bernardi was right, and it was past time for her to stow away her worries and get to work.

“Thank you, Father. I had better see if Nico needs my help.”

“No need,” he said from the doorway. “Sorry I took so long—I had to rummage around a bit. Does this look all right?”

Nico set down the tray on the bedside table and stepped away so she might inspect its contents. She saw at a glance that he’d thought of everything: bandages, gauze, lint, scissors, tweezers, bottles of iodine and rubbing alcohol, and a basin of steaming water.

“Well done, Nurse Gerardi,” she praised him. “I’ll wash my hands now.”

She hurried downstairs to the rectory’s modest little kitchen, and though there was a bar of soap in a dish by the sink, there were no clean towels in sight. Instead she shook off the excess water and hurried upstairs before she could forget her next question for Father Bernardi.

“Do you have any clean towels or napkins I might use? Not your good things, though. Nothing you mind getting stained.”

“Of course,” he promised, and returned a few minutes later with a stack of pristine linen towels, each one starched and ironed to a glossy sheen.

“Are you certain?”

“Quite certain. There are mountains in the cupboard down the hall. Only . . . would you mind taking them home to launder? I don’t want my housekeeper to fret over the bloodstains.”