“Dr. Mazin and his wife are Italian. Their parents were Italian. Their families have lived here for hundreds of years. And still they have been persecuted in this, their only home, simply for the fact that they are Jewish. They are Jewish, and so is their daughter, Antonina. Though Nina is the name she uses now.”

The silence that followed, as both Aldo and Rosa tried to make sense of what he had just told them, was achingly painful.

“You are their daughter?” Aldo asked at last. “You are Jewish?” Yet he didn’t seem angry or affronted. Only surprised. “Why did you and Nico tell us you were an orphan? Why didn’t you tell us the truth?”

“I wanted to,” Nina said, blinking back tears. “But Nico thought it best that we keep it a secret.”

“We wouldn’t have cared,” Rosa said. “I was awful when you first got here, but that’s because I was upset with Nico. I couldn’t believe he’d fallen in love and spent all that time with a woman and never so much as told me her name. All those months and he’d never thought to tell me about you.”

“And therein lies the second part of our confession,” Father Bernardi said, his expression ever more serious. “Last year Dr. Mazin became convinced that it was no longer safe for Antonina to remain in Venice. He and I had talked of it before—the notion that I would find a place for her to hide until the war was done. I told Nico of it, in the course of some other conversations we were having, and he offered to take Nina in. Sight unseen.”

Rosa had been standing, but now she grasped hold of the tabletop and collapsed into the nearest chair. “You weren’t in love,” she whispered. “That was all a lie?”

“At first it was,” Nina pleaded. “I liked him straightaway—how could I not? And then, not so long after, we became friends. And then . . . then it was impossible not to love him. And I do, Rosa. I love him with my whole heart.”

“If you weren’t married when you first came here, then when?” Rosa asked, flushing a little.

“We’re not married,” Nina admitted. “And I wish, now, that we’d gone to Father Bernardi. But I didn’t want to have a Christian wedding.”

“Oh,” Rosa said, and she began to dab at her eyes with the corner of her apron.

“The rest, Nina,” Father Bernardi prompted. “Don’t forget the rest.”

“I don’t want Lucia to be baptized. I don’t want to offend you, or hurt you in any way, but she’s my daughter. She is my daughter, and that means she, too, is Jewish. And so that’s why . . . well. That’s why I asked Father Bernardi to come.”

“Did you think we would reject you?” Aldo asked.