brick. A shimmering collection of pots hung over a long wooden farm table. Ciro looked back to see if Eduardo had followed him. Alone and free, Ciro took a chance and ran to the kitchen doorway and peered inside. The kitchen was as warm as the hottest summer day. Ciro let the waves of heat roll over him.
A beautiful woman, much younger than his mother, was working at the table. She wore a long jumper of gray-striped wool with a white cotton apron tied over it. Her black hair was wrapped tightly into a chignon and tucked under a black kerchief. Her dark brown eyes squinted as she rolled a long skein of pasta on a smooth marble work slab. She hummed a tune as she took a small knife and whittled away tiny stars of dough, unaware that Ciro was watching her. Her long fingers moved surely and deftly with the knife. Soon, a batch of tiny pasta beads began to pile up on the board. Ciro decided that all women are beautiful, except maybe the old ones like Sister Domenica. “Corallini?” Ciro asked.
The young woman looked up and smiled at the little boy in the big clothes. “Stelline,” she corrected him, holding up a small piece of dough carved into the shape of a star. She scooped up a pile of the little stars and threw them into a big bowl.
“What are you making?”
“Baked custard.”
“It smells like cake in the hallway.”
“That’s the butter and the nutmeg. The custard is better than cake. It’s so delicious it pulls angels off their perches. At least that’s what I tell the other sisters. Did it make you hungry?”
“I was already hungry.”
The woman laughed. “Who are you?”
“Who are you?” He narrowed his eyes.
“I’m Sister Teresa.”
“I’m sorry, Sister. But, you . . . you look like a girl. You don’t look like a nun.”
“I don’t wear a nice habit when I’m cooking. What’s your name?”
Ciro sat on a stool across from the nun. “Ciro Augustus Lazzari,” he said proudly.
“That’s a big name. Are you a Roman emperor?”
“Nope.” Ciro remembered he was speaking with a nun. “Sister.”
“How old are you?”
“Ten. I’m big for my age. I pull the rope at the water wheel in town.”
“That’s impressive.”
“I’m the only boy my age who can. They call me an ox.”
Sister Teresa reached behind the table and pulled a heel of bread from a bin. She slathered it with soft butter and handed it to the boy. As Ciro ate, she swiftly carved more stars from the dough and added them to the large bowl filled with a batter of milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, and nutmeg. She stirred the ingredients evenly with a large enamel spoon. Ciro watched the creamy folds of custard, now speckled with stars, lap over one another as the mixture thickened. Sister poured the custard into ceramic cups on a metal tray without spilling a drop. “Are you visiting?”
“We’ve been sent here to work because we’re poor.”
“Everyone in Vilminore di Scalve is poor. Even the nuns.”
“We’re really poor. We don’t have a house anymore. We ate all the chickens, and Mama sold the cow. She sold a painting and all the books. Didn’t get much. And that money has almost run out.”
“It’s the same story in every village in the Alps.”
“We won’t stay long. My mother is going to the city, and she’ll come and get us this summer.” Ciro looked over at the deep wood-burning oven and figured that he would have to stoke and clean it until his mother returned. He wondered how many fireplaces there were in the convent. He imagined there were lots of them. He’d probably spend every hour of daylight chopping wood and building fires.
“What brought you to the convent?”
“Mama can’t stop crying.”
“Why?”
“She misses Papa.”
Sister lifted the tray of custard cups and placed them in the oven. She checked the surface of several other baked custard cups on a cooling rack. What a lovely thing, to work in a warm kitchen in the cold winter and make food. Ciro imagined that people who work in kitchens are never hungry.
“Where did your father go?”
“They say he died, but I don’t think so,” Ciro said.
“Why don’t you believe them?” Sister wiped her hands on a moppeen and leaned on the table so she might be eye to eye with the boy.
“Eduardo read the letter that was sent to Mama from America. They say Papa died in a mine, but they never found his body. That’s why I don’t think