CHAPTER ONE

      WHEN NEVE SPOTTED the ad in the Vancouver newspaper in the second to last week of June, she felt a shiver of excitement run through her. It was an ad requesting applications from Canadian nannies for a position for the summer. In Italy. And Southern Italy, at that. A place she had visited with her mother when she was eighteen. Her parents had traveled through Calabria and Sicily on their honeymoon, and her mother’s nostalgia had drawn her back for what would have been their nineteenth anniversary.

      Neve had loved the leisurely five-week tour through the seaside towns and mountain hamlets, culminating with the last week in Valdoro—Valley of Gold—on the southeast coast of Calabria. It was the town where Neve had been conceived. Neve could still envision the shimmering, color-changing waves of the Ionian Sea. And the dazzling sun that rose at dawn, its face an orange-gold orb that soon took dominion of the cerulean sky. By 8:00 a.m., the temperature would register over thirty degrees Celsius, and Neve couldn’t wait to head to the beach.

      Her imagination had gone wild as they explored the ancient places she had read about in the works of British authors who had traveled to the area over a century earlier. Because of Greek colonization a thousand or so years ago, the area had become known as Magna Grecia, or Great Greece. Neve had read the books her parents had discovered about the South, including George Gissing’s By The Ionian Sea and Norman Douglas’s Old Calabria. She had particularly enjoyed Edward Lear’s Voyages in Southern Italy. Lear had traveled to the South with another artist to paint landscapes. As he traveled from hamlet to hamlet, he had written about his experiences in a journal. His accounts of peculiar townsfolk and the places they had stayed had put Neve in stitches, like the story of a pig running out from under a table as they were feasting on a dinner of macaroni. As an adolescent, Neve had dreamed of returning to Italy one day to rediscover the places that had so enchanted her.

      Reading the details in the ad, Neve’s jaw dropped. What were the chances of coming across a job opportunity in Valdoro for the summer? And one that she could easily apply for, since her job as a kindergarten teacher meant she had summers free. The ad read:

       Canadian Nanny wanted to prepare child for Kindergarten.

       Summer Position.

       Only highly experienced applicants will be considered.

       Skills in Behavioral Management and Modification a must.

       Child has experienced trauma and requires a special caregiver.

       Three nannies have been recently dismissed; please do not apply if you believe this will be a vacation.

       Position is full-time, with one day off per week.

       Send a letter including your CV to my assistant, Mrs. Lucia Michele, email address below.

       Do not inquire as to the status of your application.

       You will be contacted within one week for an interview if I am interested.

      Neve read the ad over several times. The prospective employer obviously wanted to make it quite clear to the applicant that this job was not going to be an easy one. She wondered at the trauma of the poor child. A death? Divorce? Abuse? Her stomach twisted. She had a special place in her heart for children; she always had, even as a teenager. She had babysat regularly in her neighborhood, and she had decided early on that teaching would be the career for her. She had been teaching now for three years, and maybe that didn’t make her highly experienced, but she had dealt with a few difficult and sensitive situations, and as a result, had taken specialized courses to help children who had experienced trauma of some kind.

      She herself had experienced the loss of her father as a child. He had succumbed to a sudden stroke when she was eight, and it still made her heart twinge when she remembered the day she had come home from school and had found her house filled with relatives and family friends, some gathered around her mother. Bewildered, she had run toward her mother, who had sobbed the news to her before collapsing. Sadly, over the years, her mother had been more preoccupied with her loss and less over Neve’s trauma of losing her father.

      Neve’s eyes prickled. She squeezed them shut, then focused on the ad.

      Who was the sender? The most logical answer was that it was a parent who couldn’t stay at home and needed someone to help the child deal with the trauma and help prepare him or her for the challenge of another transition: school.

      A tall order. Especially since progress so far had been limited. At least that was what she had inferred from the terse statement: three nannies have recently been dismissed. She felt a twinge in her heart at what the child must be going through and the poor, desperate parent. A thousand thoughts swarmed her mind about the sad possibilities, and then one thought pushed the others away: I’m going to apply.

      And why not? She had the sensitivity required for such a position, given her own personal history. And she had dealt with behavioral and trauma issues in her three years of teaching, everything from stubbornness and aggression to grief over the loss of a parent or pet.

      Yes, she would have loved to return to a vacation in Valdoro, but just being there and knowing she would be helping a child in distress—or attempting to help—was enough to motivate her. She would be content with reacquainting herself with the area on her day off. Of course, that was if she was hired for the position.

      Neve had been ready to go to bed when she had picked up the newspaper, but now she was too excited to sleep. She reached for her laptop and typed up a letter. She read it over twice, added a section, read it over again and then attached her most recent CV. Taking a deep breath, she typed in the email address and pressed Send before she could change her mind.

      With a shiver of anticipation, Neve ran a bath, her imagination sparked. As she stepped into its bubbly warmth, her floral-scented body wash reminded