Cecilia stayed away from her. The house blessing must have worked. She visited the city of Treviso, where she strolled under the porticoes of streets echoing to the sound of exuberant university graduates, celebrating their laureate with crowns of laurels and singing raunchy songs in the wine bars. Giving them a wide berth, she headed for the Buranelli Canal, to take photos and do some sketching. Treviso wasn’t known as “little Venice” for nothing, and she found it charming. She was behaving like an everyday tourist, interested in the past, but not reliving it. Yet her heart ached for Cecilia and she began to regret banishing her from her life. The next morning, she went to Marostica, in the nearby province of Vicenza. There, she gazed up at the ancient walls encircling the fortress at the top of the hill; it seemed as if the fort was reaching its arms down and hugging the town below. Fern strolled to the main square, dominated by the lower castle, where every other year, in September, they played a “live”
