Love in a Time of War by Adrienne Chinn

Author:Adrienne Chinn [Chinn, Adrienne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008501594
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Chapter Forty-Two

Christina

Capri, Italy – July 1892

The day is fine; another Caprese July day like the previous one and the day before that. Days with skies as blue as her mother’s favourite delphiniums, turquoise seas rolling in the summer breeze, the air perfumed with spicy rosemary and lemons. Days that she had held inside of herself and unfurled in her mind’s eye when the skies had darkened and life became bleak and hopeless in the dreadful month after Cecelia’s birth.

She lifts her face to the sun and shuts her eyes, willing the heat to penetrate through the leaden layers of her skin. The backs of her eyelids glow red and tears prick at her eyes. The tears come, a trickle at first, then a sudden surge, spewing from her eyes and down her sun-reddened cheeks, over her lips to her tongue. Salt. The only thing she can still taste.

‘Cara mia, cara mia. Don’t cry, my darling girl.’ Stefania Albertini brushes Christina’s auburn hair with her hand as the girl weeps into her shoulder. ‘You must be strong, Tina. You are an Innocenti, like your mother and like me. You must bury the pain deep inside yourself. What is done cannot be undone. You must move forward. You are not a girl any longer. You have someone else you must live for. You are a mother now.’

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