“Of course.” She tilted the baby’s face toward them. “What do you think?”

“Hmm,” said Carlo. “She’s very small.”

“New babies usually are, but she’ll get bigger.”

“What are you going to call her?”

“Nico wants her name to be Lucia. What do you think?”

He nodded vigorously. “I like it.”

“That’s enough for now,” Rosa said. “Nina and baby Lucia both need their sleep.” Turning to Nina, she added, “I’ll be back once they’re settled.”

Romilda had finished packing up her bag. “I’ll return tomorrow to see how you’re doing. Nurse her whenever she wakes, and if you have any trouble getting her to latch, have Rosa fetch me.”

“Thank you,” Nina said. Suddenly she was so tired it was an effort to even say that much.

“You’re a brave girl, Nina. You faced down that labor with as much courage as any woman I’ve ever known, and I’ve delivered more babies than I can count. I only hope you’ll remember that in the days to come.”

Chapter 24

9 October 1944

As soon as Nina was able to climb the ladder, Aldo and Rosa had insisted she and Lucia move to the hiding place. They had made it comfortable for her, even homey, with a freshly filled mattress of corn husks, the same woolen pad from her bed below, and a warmly lined basket for the baby. The children visited her, too, sworn to secrecy.

“No one can know,” Aldo had explained. “Not your teacher, Carlo, nor any of your friends.”

Rosa was up and down the ladder many times over the course of each day, and Aldo, too, for he loved to hold his granddaughter and sing to her softly, soothe her when she was fussy, and tell her stories about Nico when he’d been a little boy.

“How do you manage it?” she asked, wondering at how he was able to smile and laugh so easily. “I want to laugh. I want to be happy again. But I’ve no idea how to do it. How am I meant to survive?”

“It’s no great secret. We rise at dawn and we do our work and we live our lives. That’s all. And we never forget that Nico only wants happiness for those he loves.”

“I know, but how am I to shut out the memory of what was done to him? The knowledge of what he is suffering now?”