He nodded, and then he gathered her and their daughter into the shelter of his arms.

“Lucia was waiting for me,” she answered, not wishing to tell him how deeply she had despaired. How lost she had been to the promise of hope. One day she would share it all with him, but not until they’d both had a chance to heal.

“I would give anything to take that suffering from you. To put myself in your place.”

“I know, my darling,” she soothed him. “I know. But now the night is over.”

He bent his head to kiss her. “The winter is past.”

“The winter is past,” she echoed. “The rain has gone, and our days of joy? They have only just begun.”

Epilogue

3 July 1946

Never had she known a more perfect day.

They had arranged for Nico’s cousins to come and take care of the farm, and everyone—she, Nico, Lucia, Aldo, Rosa, and all the children—had piled into Zio Beppe’s ancient truck the evening before and made the journey, far shorter than if they’d gone by mule cart, to Cousin Mario’s farm in Campalto.

That morning they’d risen at first light, the children more excited than they’d been at Epiphany, and one of Mario’s neighbors, whose daily delivery route took him from the mainland farms to the Rialto market, had ferried them to the Fondamente Nove and its hourly vaporetto to the Lido. They could only afford two days away from the farm, and as this was their one day at the seaside, they were all determined to make the most of it.

They would never be wealthy people, but the recovery of Nina’s parents’ savings some months earlier had been an unexpected, and altogether providential, windfall. Of her family’s home and its contents she had received nothing: the house had been seized by the fascists and sold to Gentiles; her parents’ possessions had vanished, and no accounting had been made of their dispersal. All that remained were the few things she had packed into her rucksack on the day she had said goodbye to her mother and father.

The savings, though modest, would be enough to pay the wages of a farmhand while Nico returned to university; he was set to begin his studies at the University of Padua in September. They had found a little flat that would be just big enough for the three of them and, before long, a fourth; their baby was due in the new year.

When her children were a little older Nina, too, would return to school, for she was determined to fulfill the dream that she and her father had shared. Until then, she would savor every kiss, every laugh, and every sun-drenched day as the gifts they truly were.