“You can’t. I wish you could, but you can’t. Not when you love him as you do. And I do understand, Nina. I do. When my Anna Maria died, I thought I would die, too. Seeing her struggle to give birth to Carlo, watching her in pain, knowing how much she suffered . . . even now I can’t bear to think of it. But I survived. I survived, too, when Marco was killed. And I will survive this latest horror, and pray every day that my son will come home to me.”

“And what if he doesn’t? What then?”

“Then we endure, and we remind ourselves to hope, and one day we wake and the weight of it is a little less.”

“I wish I could believe you.”

“You will. One day, my dearest daughter, I promise you will.”

Lucia was only a week old when Rosa gently introduced the subject of the baby’s baptism. “We do need to get it done quickly, if only so she still fits in the gown my mother made. Father Bernardi can do it here, at the house.”

Nina nodded, and smiled, and asked if they might talk about it again when she wasn’t quite so tired, and Rosa abandoned the subject.

But only until the next day. “I know you don’t want to have the baptism when Nico isn’t here. I understand. But we must get it done.”

And Nina knew the only way out of it was to tell Rosa and Aldo the truth. Every last bit of it. So she asked if Father Bernardi might come for a visit, as he hadn’t yet seen the baby. In deference to his bad knees Nina brought the baby downstairs and they all gathered around the table in the kitchen. Only the adults, for they’d prudently waited to bring her downstairs until it was dark, which meant the little ones were in bed; Matteo and Paolo were outside keeping watch.

Father Bernardi took the chair next to Nina, and he admired the baby, and then his usual merry expression vanished and he put on his serious face, and both Rosa and Aldo noticed right away.

“Is something wrong, Father?” Rosa asked worriedly.

“Have you had news of Nico?”

“No, Aldo. Nothing like that. I’m here because Nina and I have a confession to make.” And then, looking to Nina, “Would you like me to begin?”

She nodded, her throat closing in, and listened as he began to tell her story.

“For many years I have been friends with a physician in Venice. His name is Gabriele Mazin. At first I was a patient of his, and then, over the decades—I think it must be close to thirty years now—we became ever closer, and now I count him among my dearest friends.” He paused, waiting for Rosa and Aldo to digest that first, seemingly inconsequential, piece of information.