José stroked my hair. “Of course. We’ll have the villa we always talked about. A little farm with horses and an olive grove.”

“I want orange trees,” I said with a smile. “The olives will be for you, but the oranges, they’ll be for me. I love the scent of fresh orange blossoms in the morning.”

“I will plant a whole grove of oranges just for you.”

I lay there for a moment, dreaming of this piece of paradise that we would rest in once this battle was over, but there was one thing that it needed. “We need a tree.”

He chuckled. “There’ll be no shortage of those.”

“No, there has to be one tree whose only purpose is climbing.”

He turned his head, raising an eyebrow to question me.

“When I was a child, I climbed every tree I could, much to my mother’s dismay.” I laughed at the memory of my parents pulling me from a tree after mass. “Children, especially our children, need to have adventures of their own design. They need to be allowed to climb trees.”

José kissed my head. “Whatever you want, tesoro mio.”

* * *

Weeks passed, and I hadn’t heard anything from José. Every waking moment left me wondering what was happening to my husband and his men. There was hardly any news in the papers. I was going to go mad from either the lack of information or the forced solitude brought on me by my mother-in-law. When a messenger arrived at our door one morning, I pushed Mamma Garibaldi out of the way as I grabbed the letter he clutched in his hands. Furiously, I tore open the letter to find a note from Paolo. José was gravely ill with a fever and unable to leave his bed.

“I am going to José. I will be leaving the children here with you. The nurse will be here daily to assist you,” I said to my mother-in-law as she sat in her chair embroidering.

“Battlefields are no place for a woman. Besides, you don’t like me tending to your children.”

“Your son is sick. He could be dying. I would move heaven and hell to get to him, battlefield or not.”

Her shoulders sagged. “When do you leave?”

“Tomorrow morning before dawn.”

The next morning, I crept into the children’s bedroom. Teresita and Menotti were already awake and sitting up in their bed together. Menotti would soon be leaving for school in Turin, at nine years old, my little boy becoming a man. Ricciotti still slumbered in his crib. I kissed Menotti on the forehead. “Be brave, my love.”

Teresita wrapped her arms around my neck, burrowing her little face into my hair. “Mamãe, no go.”

“I have to, my darling. Papai is sick.”

Tears spilled out of her eyes. “No” was all she could say.

I wiped her black hair from her face. My four-year-old daughter, never afraid to speak her mind or push the boundaries. She and I were a lot alike, and because of that I worried for her. Teresita’s life would not be easy. “My darling, I promise you I will return. Until then, be a good girl.”