“He had some savings. A Gentile friend kept the money for him, otherwise it would have been taken. And we learned to do without. All we wanted was to live in peace. To stay in the city where I was born, and my parents before me, and all our ancestors for as far back as we could remember. For hundreds of years it was our home, and now . . .”

So much for her moment of happiness.

“It will be your home again. As soon as the war is over.”

“By then it will be too late. My parents . . .”

“Deserve none of this. Nor do you,” he insisted.

“I used to pray. I used to ask God to protect my family. To keep them safe.”

“And now?”

“I haven’t prayed for years. Not since Mamma’s stroke. Not since the laws that turned my family into outcasts. I hope you don’t think that makes me a bad person.”

“Never,” he whispered, his lips brushing so softly against her brow. “Not least because I have the same doubts and fears.”

“Don’t you believe in God?”

“I want to believe. I do. But the things I’ve seen and done have changed me. Marked me. And now I can’t imagine how this war will end. Or where I will be when it is over.”

“You will be here with me. We will be together,” she promised. “Tell me you can believe in that, if nothing else.”

“Then I will. For you, Nina, I will believe.”

Chapter 17

2 April 1944

It was Palm Sunday, which meant, to Nina’s secret dismay, that Mass lasted far longer than usual. Normally she tried to appear attentive, if only to avoid hurting Father Bernardi’s feelings, but simply remaining upright and awake had been near to impossible in the crowded and too-warm church. Not that anyone would notice if her attention wandered, for she was in her usual place, right against the wall, and all around her heads were bobbing as people nodded off, startled themselves awake, and drifted again into somnolence.

Nico had been gone for several weeks, and in his absence she’d found it increasingly difficult to sleep. Last night she’d lain awake for hours, wondering and worrying, and no matter how often she’d told herself to be sensible, to be rational, her mind had refused to obey. She had fallen asleep not far short of dawn, her face pressed against Nico’s pillow, her body bereft of his comforting warmth and weight.

Instead of listening to the endless and unintelligible Latin of the service, she tried to stay awake by working out, from memory alone, the likely date for the start of Passover. Last year it had begun toward the end of April, but she’d never thought much of how and why the date varied. It might already have passed, for all she knew; there were years, after all, when it had fallen at the end of March.