“I knew this was going to be a good day.”

With a laugh, he dragged her into the living room, pressed her to the wall, and gave her a kiss that made her dizzy. Much too soon, Giulia called out to them from the kitchen, and they were forced to break away.

While they worked, the townspeople spoke with heart-wringing emotion and dramatic gestures about how relieved they would be when old Paolo’s secret money stash was found and they no longer had to live in mortal fear. Isabel wondered if an entire town could win an Academy Award.

Tracy waddled down with Marta and Connor. Harry appeared half an hour later with the older children. He looked frazzled and depressed, and Isabel was surprised to see Ren walk over and speak with him.

Steffie stayed at her father’s side except when she scampered away to talk to Ren. He seemed to enjoy her company, a surprise after all the complaining he’d done about having the children around. Maybe the incident yesterday had changed his outlook. He even crouched down to talk with Brittany, despite the fact that she’d taken off her T-shirt.

When Jeremy saw his sisters getting so much attention, he began to misbehave, something his parents seemed too dispirited to notice. Ren complimented him on his muscles, then set him to work carrying stone.

Isabel decided she preferred food service to manual labor, so she helped make sandwiches and keep the water pitchers filled. Marta chided her in Italian, although not unkindly, for slicing the panforte too thinly. One by one, the people who’d caused her trouble managed to find their way to her side to make amends. Giancarlo apologized for the ghost incident, and Bernardo, off duty for the morning, took her to meet his wife, a sad-eyed woman named Fabiola.

Around one o’clock a handsome Italian with thick, curly hair appeared. Giulia brought him to meet Isabel. “This is Vittorio’s brother, Andrea. He is our very excellent local doctor. He closed his office for the afternoon to help in the search.”

“Piacere, signora. I’m happy to meet you.” He tossed away his cigarette. “A bad habit, I know, for a doctor.”

Andrea had a small scar on his cheek and a rogue’s practiced eye. As they chatted, she grew aware of Ren watching from the wall, and she tried to convince herself he was being possessive. Unlikely, but a nice fantasy.

Tracy wandered over. Isabel introduced her to Andrea, and she asked him to recommend a local obstetrician.

“I deliver the babies of Casalleone.”

“How fortunate for their mothers.” Tracy’s reply was flirtatious, but only, Isabel suspected, because Harry was near enough to overhear.

By midafternoon the wall had been taken apart stone by stone, and the festive mood had disappeared. They’d found nothing more exciting than a few dead mice and some shards of broken pottery. Giulia stood alone at the top of the scarred hillside, head down. Bernardo looked as though he were comforting his sad-eyed wife. A woman named Tereza, who seemed to be another of Anna’s relatives, linked arms with her mother. Andrea Chiara went off to speak with one of the younger men, who was smoking and kicking the dirt with his boot.

Just then Vittorio arrived. He took in the mood of the group and immediately headed to Giulia’s side. Isabel watched as he steered her into the shadows of the pergola, where he pulled her close.

Ren joined Isabel by one of the gravel paths. “I feel like I’m at a funeral.”

“There’s something more at stake here than a missing artifact.”

“I sure would like to know what.”

Giulia drew away from Vittorio and approached them, looking teary. “You will excuse us from dinner tonight, yes? I am not feeling so good. This will leave more porcini for you to eat.”

Isabel remembered Giulia’s earlier excitement about the meal. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

“Can you make a miracle?”

“No, but I can pray for one.”

Giulia gave a wan smile. “Then you must pray very hard.”

“It might be easier if she knew what she was praying for,” Ren said.

Vittorio had remained by the pergola, and Giulia turned her head just enough to give him an imploring look. He shook his head. Isabel saw resentment cloud Giulia’s features and decided it was time to step up the pressure. “We can’t help if you won’t be truthful with us.”

Giulia rubbed one hand with the other. “I do not think you could help anyway.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Her arms flew. “Do you see a child in my arms? Yes, I am in trouble.”

Vittorio heard her, and he shot forward. “That’s enough, Giulia.”

Ren seemed to read Isabel’s mind, which at that moment was telling her they needed to divide and conquer. As Isabel slipped an arm around Giulia’s shoulders, he stepped into the path to cut Vittorio off. “Why don’t we talk?”

Isabel quickly steered Giulia around the side of the house to her car. “Let’s go for a ride.”

Giulia got into the Panda without protest. Isabel backed out and headed for the road. She waited a few minutes before she said anything.

“I suspect you have a good reason for not telling us the truth.”

Giulia rubbed her eyes wearily. “How do you know I’m not telling the truth?”

“Because your story sounded too much like one of Ren’s movie scripts. Besides, I don’t think stolen money would make you so sad.”

“You are a very smart woman.” She combed her fingers through her hair, hooking it behind her ear. “No one wants to look foolish.”

“And that’s what you’re afraid of? That the truth will make you look foolish? Or is it just that Vittorio has forbidden you to talk?”

“You think I keep silent because Vittorio has told me to?” She gave a tired laugh. “No. It is not because of him.”

“Then why? It’s obvious you need help. Maybe Ren and I could provide a different perspective.”

“Or maybe not.” She crossed her legs. “You’ve been so kind to me.”

“What are friends for?”

“You have been a better friend to me than I have to you.”

As they passed a small farmhouse where a woman worked in the garden, Isabel felt the weight of Giulia’s internal battle.

“It is not my story to tell,” Giulia finally said. “It is the whole town’s, and they will be angry with me.” She grabbed a tissue from a pack Isabel had left on the seat and blew her nose with an angry bleat. “I don’t care. I am going to tell you. And if you think it is foolish… well, then, I cannot blame you.”

Isabel waited. Giulia’s breasts rose and fell before she gave a sigh of resignation. “We are looking for the Ombra della Mattina.”

It took a few moments for Isabel to remember the votive statue of the Etruscan boy from the Guarnacci Museum, Ombra della Sera. She eased up on the accelerator to allow a truck to pass. “What does it mean? Ombra della Mattina?”

“Shadow of the Morning.”

“The statue in Volterra is called Shadow of the Evening. That isn’t a coincidence, is it?”

“Ombra della Mattina is its mate. A female statue. Thirty years ago our village priest found it when he was planting rosebushes at the gate of the cemetery.”

Just as Ren had suspected. “And the people of the village don’t want to turn it over to the government.”

“Do not think this is an ordinary case of greedy people trying to hide an artifact. If only it were that simple.”

“But this is a very valuable artifact.”

“Yes, but not only in the way you are thinking.”

“I don’t understand.”

Giulia tugged on her small pearl earring. She looked drawn and exhausted. “Ombra della Mattina has special powers. This is why we do not speak of it to outsiders.”

“What kind of powers?”

“Unless you were born in Casalleone, you cannot understand. Even those of us born here did not believe.” She made one of her small, graceful gestures. “We laughed when our parents told us stories about the statue, but now we are no longer laughing.” She finally turned to look at Isabel. “Three years ago Ombra della Mattina disappeared, and since then not one woman within thirty kilometers of this town has been able to conceive.”

“No one has gotten pregnant in three years?”

“Only those who have been able to conceive away from the town.”

“And you really believe that the disappearance of the statue is responsible?”

“Vittorio and I were educated at the university. Do we believe it rationally? No. But the fact remains… The only way any couples have been able to get pregnant is to do so beyond the borders of Casalleone, and this is not always so easy.”

Finally Isabel understood. “That’s why you’re always traveling to meet Vittorio. You’re trying to have a child.”

Giulia’s hands twisted in her lap. “And why our friends Cristina and Enrico, who want a second child, must leave their daughter with her nonna night after night so they can get away. And why Sauro and Tea Grifasi drive far out into the country to make love in their car, then drive back home afterward. Sauro was fired from his job last month because he kept sleeping through his alarm clock. And this is why Anna is sad all the time. Bernardo and Fabiola can not get pregnant to make her a grandmother.”

“The pharmacist in town is pregnant. I’ve seen her.”

“For six months she lived in Livorno with a sister who always criticizes. Her husband drove back and forth every night. Now they are getting divorced.”

“But what does all this have to do with the farmhouse and old Paolo?”

Giulia rubbed her eyes. “Paolo is the one who stole the statue.”

“Apparently Paolo had a reputation for disliking children,” Isabel told Ren that evening as they stood in the kitchen together, gently wiping the dirt from the porcini with damp cloths. “He didn’t like the noise they made, and he complained that having so many children meant they had to spend too much money on schools.”

“My kind of guy. So he decides to cut the town’s birthrate by stealing the statue. And what part of your mind did you lose when you started to believe this story?”

“Giulia was telling the truth.”

“I don’t doubt that. What I’m having trouble comprehending is the fact that you’re taking the supposed powers of this statue seriously.”

“God works in mysterious ways.” Ren was making a mess of the kitchen as usual, and she began clearing space on the counter.

“Spare me.”

“No one has conceived a child in Casalleone since the statue was stolen,” she said.

“And yet I’m not feeling any compulsion to throw away your condoms. Doesn’t this offend your academic sensibilities just a little?”

“Not at all.” She carried a stack of dirty bowls to the sink. “It supports what I know. The mind is very powerful.”

“You’re saying there’s some kind of mass hysteria going on? That women aren’t conceiving because they believe they can’t conceive?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“I liked the Mafia story better.”

“Only because it had guns.”

He smiled and leaned down to kiss her on the nose, which led to her mouth, which led to her breast, and several minutes passed before they came back up for air. “Cook,” she said weakly. “I’ve been waiting all day for those mushrooms.”

He groaned and grabbed his knife. “You got a lot more out of Giulia than I got out of Vittorio, I’ll give you that. But the statue disappeared three years ago. Why did everyone have to wait until now to dig up this place?”

“The town’s priests kept the statue in the church office…”

“And isn’t it charming the way paganism and Christianity can still coexist?”

“Everyone knew it was there,” she said, rinsing out a bowl, “but the local officials didn’t want a rebellion on their hands by reporting it, so they looked the other way. Paolo had done odd jobs at the church for years, but no one made the connection between him and the statue’s disappearance until he died a few months later. Then people started remembering that he didn’t like children.”

Ren rolled his eyes. “Definitely suspicious.”

“Marta always defended him. She said he didn’t hate children. That he was just imbronciato because of his arthritis. What does ‘imbronciato’ mean?”

“Grouchy.”

“She pointed out that he’d been a good father to his daughter. He’d even flown to the States years ago to see his granddaughter when she was born. So people backed off, and other rumors started to fly. I guess it got fairly ugly.”

“Any guns?”

“Sorry, no.” She wiped up a small section of the counter. “The day before I arrived, Anna sent Giancarlo down here to clean up a rubbish pile that had gotten out of hand. And guess what he found tucked in a hole in the wall when he accidentally knocked out one of the stones?”