“No,” says Sofia, “of course not. But you helped me to understand that things are not all good or all bad. Because of war we have Julia. Because of violence Antonia and Paolo have Robbie. I can see both sides when I’m working. The people we help. I can see the good and the bad.”

“You go out to dinner,” says Saul, before he can help himself. “You don’t see the violence.”

Sofia’s mouth becomes a thin line. “I was raised in it,” she says icily. “And there is no changing what has happened already. So, you’ve decided you have a moral objection to the way things work. Do you propose we leave? Explain to Julia that she can never see Nonno or Nonna or Aunt Tonia or Uncle Paoli or Bibi again and flee and start over somewhere, and you can get a job bagging groceries and I can take care of Julia all on my own, and we can just worry for the rest of our lives that someday they would find us and you would disappear too? Because you would, eventually. They wouldn’t spare you because of me.” Sofia is whispering, too, but her words fill Saul’s ears; they drown out everything else. “Do you think that would cause less pain than staying?”

Saul stares at the crack in the ceiling until he can hear Sofia’s breaths even out again, and then he creeps off the mattress and into the kitchen, where he begins an elaborate breakfast, moving quietly so as not to wake anyone else before dawn.

Julia is the first one up. She stretches her limbs and drags her blanket into the living room, where Sofia is asleep alone. She crawls into the hollow where Saul’s body had tossed for most of the night and presses herself against her mamma’s back. When Saul next peeks into the living room he sees the heads of his daughter and wife lined up on the same pillow. Julia opens her eyes and says Papa, which is a command and a prayer and a pure, unfettered cry of love, and Saul opens his arms for her, imagines slicing himself open down the middle and enveloping Julia with every power of protection he has.

—

Antonia is not unhappy in her marriage.

There are many days she has everything she can imagine.

Those days Paolo gets home early enough that she is not run ragged and he is not so grouchy he spends the evening raging monotonously about how much use he could be in a different position. And she does not think about her papa, and she does not wonder if she made the right choice, and her mamma’s voice saying don’t speak to anyone with slicked-back hair does not echo in her mind.