She concentrated on walking, just walking, for there was nothing she could do about her hair or sunburned face until they arrived. All she could do was walk.

“Here.” He handed her a folded cloth, damp and blessedly cool. “Take this. It’s clean—Zia Elisa used it to wrap the bread.”

Never had anything felt so good as that cloth against her face and neck. “How far?” she managed.

“Not even a half hour. If you look up you’ll see—one more hill and we’re there.”

She was too tired to look up. She was too tired to think of how stiff she was after sleeping on the ground, how hungry and hot and wretched she felt. She wouldn’t think of the blister on her left heel or her sunburned face. She wouldn’t let herself think of how sad and lonely and adrift she felt with her parents so far away. She wouldn’t think of all she had lost. She wouldn’t—

“We’re here, Nina. This is Mezzo Ciel.”

Chapter 6

They stood at the edge of a small, sloping piazza, its far corner dominated by the church and campanile that Niccolò had pointed out earlier. Its few modest shops—a cobbler, a general store, and a bakery—were shuttered for lunch, and outside the square’s lone osteria, a trio of white-haired men sat dozing in the midday sun. The buildings were old, though not old enough to be interesting, and their stucco was cracked and faded, but every window was clean and every stoop was freshly scrubbed.

“There isn’t much more to it than this. The two main streets meet here at the piazza—via Mezzo Ciel and via Santa Lucia.”

“How far are we from the farm?” she asked, hoping it wouldn’t be more than a few kilometers.

“It’s just past the church,” he answered, and then, in response to her disbelieving look, “I swear it isn’t far.”

They crossed the piazza, taking the road that led past the churchyard’s flanking walls, and almost immediately found themselves in the countryside again, the stone giving way to shambling hedgerows, the cobbles of the piazza vanishing into a dusty roadbed, and Bello was straining at his bridle and grumbling at Niccolò to hurry, hurry—and suddenly they were there.