Chapter 7
Rome. 1970.
The summer during which Sira came to Italy to spend some time with her brother and her daughter had been a particularly hot one. Enrico was staying at the house in Narni during those hot, humid months; he had taken little Anna with him, since, as she loved to remind anybody and everybody who would listen, she was on holiday break from school.
Tucked on the top of a small mountain nearby (a hilly incline, Sira was inclined to call it, so little did it resemble a mountain) was a tiny abbey, so rustic that it had no running water. Sira knew that Enrico enjoyed taking Anna with him when he went to the well to fill up barrels with water and drive them up to the priests on his little jeep, skirting the canyon that ran alongside the road.
Sira, whose indifference to reli
