“Let’s find the man who sells gelato, and we’ll see if he’ll bring his little cart along the beach so we can all choose our favorite flavors. Shall we go? Who’s with me? Girls? Paolo and Matteo? Off we go!”

Nina watched the little procession skip along the beach, heading toward the gelato seller with his brightly painted cart, and tried not to think of how much she would miss the children when she and Nico moved to Padua in September. They would return home each summer, of course, and there would be visits as often as they could manage; but it would be four years, if not longer, before they came home to Mezzo Ciel for good.

Tonight they would return to Mario’s house in Campalto, and in the morning, at dawn’s first light, she and Nico would go back across the water to Venice. Back to the house that had once belonged to her family, but whose door was forever closed to her now.

No one would notice the two small stones, scarcely more than pebbles, smooth and warm in her hand, that she had found under the olive tree at home. She would set them near the green door, tucked close to the crumbling stonework of its lintel; no broom would find them there.

She would close her eyes and say a silent prayer for her parents, for those whose lives had been stolen, and for those who had been left to go on alone. Then she and Nico would return home, but she would not forget. She would always remember.

And one day, once they were old enough to understand, she would beckon her children, hug them close, and tell them of the family she had lost, the family she had been given, and the love story that had brought her to a place called Mezzo Ciel.

Acknowledgments

This book was a labor of love, in both its research and its writing, and though I could not have completed it without the help and advice of the people below, any errors of fact or judgment that remain are my responsibility alone.

I owe an enormous debt of thanks to my husband’s family, in both Canada and Italy, for so graciously sharing their memories with me. I would specifically like to acknowledge Lucia Bizzotto, Guerrino Crespi, the Gazzola family (Angela, Mario, Carmen, and Oscar), and Maria Zardo. I am also very grateful to my husband’s late uncle, Francesco Crespi, for the memories he shared in his unpublished memoir. My sister-in-law, Michela Jach, helped me with translations and added immeasurably to my knowledge of her grandparents’ way of life, and I am so very grateful to her.