There are several places on the grounds of the estate where Kiki likes to go when she wants to be left alone.

The first is usually the library. No one uses it much but her. Don Carlos de Sonza will occasionally show off the room, with its high ceilings and sun-drenched leather tomes seated neatly on mahogany shelves, but for the most part it is Kiki’s domain. She has always loved books. When she realized how completely illiterate I was when her family first welcomed me into their home, she took it upon herself to teach me how to read. It took countless painstaking hours, but she never gave up, and so, neither could I. Now, I can comfortably stumble through her favorite Cervantes, which I do only to humor her.

But she won’t be in the library today. It would be too easy for her father or her brother or her maid to find her. And if I know her at all, she wouldn’t want to be found. Not by them. Not right now.

I walk farther away from the villa, deeper into the grounds. The orange trees rise up around me in sweet citrus columns, blocking me from the brunt of the sun’s glare. They aren’t very tall trees, but as a child, they felt massive. Now, they barely rise above my head.

The hem of my skirt drags along the dirt. I’d pick it up but that would be fighting a losing battle.

In the distance, I spot a figure seated beneath one of the older orange trees. It is still humble in height, but it is wide and lush with growth. Fat heavy fruits hang from its limbs, bending them down with their weight.

Her head is bowed over her lap as she fiddles with something in her hands. Her dark hair is halfway out of its elaborate braids, like she’d started to pull it out and gave up halfway through, leaving it to tumble around her face in soft waves. Her voluminous skirts pool around her like bubbles on bathwater.

She is lovely, as she always is. The yellow of her dress complements the oranges in the trees so well, she looks as though she’s stumbled from a painting of some artist’s idyllic notion of perfection.

A twig snaps under my foot. Kiki’s head jerks up, her brow furrowed in consternation, her mouth open slightly as if she was readying to hurl invectives at whosoever dared to intrude. But when she sees me, her mouth snaps shut.

“Hello.” I didn’t come here with a plan. That seems as safe a word as any.

She tosses the orange in her hands to the side. As it rolls away, I see that half of its skin has been picked at, messily and without much care.

A waste of food, I think, but then such is life among the aristocracy.