Nico was home for all of Saturday and Sunday, but on Monday he left at dawn, and as soon as he’d vanished down the road the women got to work on the week’s laundry. It was midday before Nina was able to spare a thought for anything beyond the baskets of steaming linens, the effort to get them loaded onto Bello’s cart, and the numbing work of rinsing every last sheet, tablecloth, and garment in the arctic waters of the stream.

By the early afternoon they were finished at the stream and ready to return to the house with Bello and his cart. Rosa let the girls run on ahead while she and Nina caught their breath and took a short rest.

“Only a few minutes, mind you, or we’ll miss the best of the sun,” Rosa cautioned, but Nina barely heard. She was so very tired, and the sun was so scorching, and she would give almost anything for the chance to lie down and rest. Five minutes only. That was all she needed.

“Here,” Rosa said, and handed Nina a clean and wonderfully cool washcloth from the nearest basket. “Wipe your face and neck. That will help.”

“Thank you. I don’t know why I’m so tired. I slept well enough last night.”

“Have you told him yet?” Rosa asked softly.

“Told him what? That I was ill? You were the one who told him. Don’t you remember?”

“No, you goose,” Rosa huffed, and it was the same reaction she always had when one of the children, usually Carlo, was being willfully obtuse. “I understand if you don’t want to tell him yet, but you don’t have to hide it from me.”

Nina stripped away the washcloth and opened her eyes. “Hide what?”

“You really don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? What did they teach you at that nursing college?”

Nina stared at Rosa, who for some strange reason was smiling—and were those tears in her eyes?

“When was the last time we washed the cloths from your monthlies?”

And still Nina stared, her thoughts in the most hopeless tangle. Could it be . . . ? And if so, how had she missed the signs?

“Don’t you keep track of such things?”

“I, uh . . .”

“I know you’re still feeling off in the mornings, and don’t tell me it’s something you ate—you went all green when you had to bandage the cut on Matteo’s leg the other day. Nina?”

“I have to sit. Just let me . . . let me sit for a moment.”

Suddenly her bottom was on the ground. She had never fainted in her life, but this was too much to take in. Too much to believe or even quite understand.