I wake up to the sound of a rooster crowing, as I often do, just before dawn. I open my eyes, letting them slowly adjust to the near-darkness of the bunk room. Across the property, the rooster cries again, and I smile to myself. He’s getting a little overly excited about his job as alarm clock for the women’s shelter commune, but that’s okay. We keep him around because the lady chickens like him, and the lady chickens give us eggs. Most of the eggs, we sell at the local weekly open-air market along with produce we grow and breads we bake, but we keep a good portion of the eggs we collect and the plants we grow for our own kitchen, as well.

It was nearly two months ago that the mysterious Costa contact showed up in my hotel room and whisked Francesca and I away to this place. At first, we were both overwhelmed, in shock at how drastically our lives changed in such a short amount of time.

Francesca, of course, fit in quickly. She speaks Italian fluently, and she’s so young and bubbly that everyone adores her.

I, however, struggled to get by. In the space of several months, I’ve gone from a New Yorker with a bright future and my own business to an essentially homeless, friendless foreigner in a country I’ve never lived in before. The guy who brought us here assured me that he would get word to my mother back in the States, tell her that I’m okay and that she should not go looking for me under any circumstances. I’m sure that conversation, if it did indeed happen, was not a particularly enjoyable one. But whatever he told her must have been pretty convincing, because she hasn’t shown up on our doorstep to take me back to New York yet.

And the more time that passes, the less I feel like an outsider here. At first, I was quiet. I was still grieving—and honestly, I still am—and without being able to speak Italian, there wasn’t much by way of social interaction for me. I clung to Francesca for a couple of weeks. It’s not that the other women here aren’t friendly. They’ve been welcoming and kind to me since the start. But it wasn’t until I started picking up Italian that I began to branch out and open up to them.

Francesca helped translate what I couldn’t understand, and we made flash cards. She quizzed me on Italian and I taught her what I know about running a business. She says that once the baby is born and she gets back on her feet, she wants to open her own version of Bathing Beauty here. It will be difficult, but she’s plucky and determined enough to do it, I think.

Nowadays, I can just about hold a fluent conversation with the other women here, and I’ve taken on some responsibilities on the property. I help with the cleaning and the cooking of meals. A few days a week I have garden duties, and on the other days I bake bread. There’s a lot to do in order to keep this place running smoothly, and even though I’m pregnant, so are many of the others. We all help out and do our part. We support each other. We listen to each other’s stories and lend a shoulder to cry on. I’ve always been kind of a loner, even when I was at the height of my high school popularity food chain. I just relied on myself, until I found Bruno again, and then I relied on him.

But now? I am part of a community. The women here are my friends and family and coworkers all rolled into one. Sometimes it does feel crowded here. It’s hard to find much time to myself, since we all share bedrooms and bathrooms and living spaces.

But honestly, it’s probably for the best that I don’t get much alone time. This place keeps me busy and distracted so I’m not constantly thinking about the horrific events which led me here. At night… that’s when those thoughts creep back in. I toss and turn most nights, reliving the good moments I had with Bruno as well as the bad—the day I lost him forever. And every day, my stomach gets a little tiny bit rounder, reminding me over and over again that Bruno will never get to meet his own child.

I roll out of bed and stretch, turning on the lamp on the little table between my bed and Francesca’s. She groans and squints in the light, turning onto her side and pulling the pillow over her face to block it out. I laugh and walk over, taking the pillow and tossing it aside. It’s a routine we do almost every morning. The more pregnant she gets, the less of a morning person she is.

“How is it already morning?” she asks in Italian.

“Well, let’s see: it was night, and now that’s over, so it’s morning,” I reply, smirking.

She opens her eyes and gives me a look of mild annoyance. “Smart-ass,” she says in English. I nudge her shoulder.

“Come on. Time to get up. Let’s go feed the chickens,” I tell her.

“Ugh,” she moans, sitting up in bed and rubbing her eyes. “Why are you always so happy in the morning? It’s too early to be happy.”

“Staying busy keeps me sane,” I answer with a shrug. “As long as I keep moving, my brain can’t catch up to me and make me think of stuff I don’t wanna think about.”

“Makes sense,” she says, yawning. “Still would rather stay in bed, though.”

“I’ll meet you in the courtyard in fifteen minutes,” I tell her with a wink. Then I get up and head down the hallway to the big communal bathroom. I slip into one of the shower stalls and hang my clothes up over the door. There are already a couple of other women in here, singing and humming in the stalls. There’s a lot of singing here.

I think we all like to keep our minds busy, and thinking about lyrics and melodies is just another way of keeping bad thoughts at bay. Everyone here has a sad story. Everyone here has seen hard times. In a way, it’s kind of helpful to know I’m not alone. By comparison, some of them have been through way worse stuff than I have.

Still, it doesn’t make the pain any less awful. I still think about Bruno every day. Every hour of every day, actually. He’s always there, in the back of my mind, and there’s still a tiny part of me that hopes he will one day come strolling through the front entrance of the shelter to rescue me and make me his bride like we planned. I still dream of the day when we can miraculously be a family together. I know it’s probably hurting me more, prolonging the pain, to think about stuff like that. But I can’t help it. It’s like my heart doesn’t understand that he’s gone and he isn’t coming back. No matter how hard my brain tries to convince me, my heart just keeps on believing.

After my shower, I dry off and get dressed. Most of the clothes we wear here are hand-me-downs, donations from thrift shops and such. I don’t mind. It’s not like I’m trying to impress anybody these days. My jeans and oversized sweater are comfortable enough to get work done while wearing them, and that suits me just fine.

Sometimes it does get a little claustrophobic, though, just hanging around the commune all the time. Some of the other women get to go out, get part-time jobs, volunteer in the community. The best I can hope for is to go to the weekly open-air market and help run the vendor stand. It’s nice to get out and see different things every now and then, so I’m grateful for that. I would love to go out and wander around town, do some exploring with Francesca at my side. Go to a restaurant and order in Italian, since I could actually do that now.

But the man who brought me here was very emphatic about the security risks involved with my residence here.

He made the woman who runs this place, Daniela Russo, swear that she would keep me under lock and key. And she has. I understand that it’s all for my safety, but it’s still hard to be cooped up here all the time.

Daniela has recently put me in charge of feeding the chickens, even though I’m not allowed to touch them, collect the eggs, or clean the coops since I’m pregnant. Francesca helps me feed them, and a couple other women who aren’t pregnant do the other parts.

My favorite part of the morning is now—when I walk out into the courtyard and all the chickens come running up to me because they associate me with food. I jokingly told Francesca once that it’s nice to feel loved, even if it’s only by a group of hungry birds. And it’s true. Despite all the warmth and camaraderie I feel surrounded by the women here, I’m still starving for love. Specifically, Bruno’s love.

I keep wondering if maybe someday I’ll stop searching for him in every shadow, listening for his voice in every silence. Somehow, I doubt it. I think my heart is going to keep looking for his heart for the rest of my life. And if I have to be content with that, I guess I’ll make my peace.

I spend the day going about my usual chores. I clean our bedroom and help clean the bathroom. I make coffee and set out baked goods for breakfast. I help tend to the garden, pulling weeds and picking ripe heirloom tomatoes. In the afternoon, Francesca and I sit down to watch an Italian soap opera I’ve gotten embarrassingly addicted to, and after that we head to the kitchen to start working on dinner for everybody.

I’m boiling a massive pot of water on the stove when suddenly there’s an ear-piercing scream from across the compound. My heart stops for a moment and I immediately turn off the stove and start running toward the sound, thinking that one of the older women has probably fallen and hurt herself.

But before I even make it out of the kitchen, someone pulls me into the pantry and shuts the door, putting a hand over my mouth.

It’s a strangely familiar sensation, and I quickly realize that it’s the man who brought me here six weeks ago. I stare at him wide-eyed and confused, wondering why the hell he would do this. I need to go see what’s going on out there. I need to help my fallen friend.

I point toward the door, hinting that I need to leave, but the man shakes his head. Then I hear a few more screams, clearly from my fellow shelter women, and then male voices. They shout out in Italian, “Where is she? Where is Serena De Laurentis?”

My heart sinks.

“We will not hurt you. We have no interest in you. Bring Serena De Laurentis to us. Now.”

My eyes well up with tears. How did this happen? How did they find me? How did the Cleaners come all the way from America to track me down here, in this most modest and unexpected of places?

Then I remember something slightly strange that happened last week at the open-air market. A young man with heavy, black brows came up. I cheerily explained our wares—tomatoes, zucchini, onions, garlic, peas, beans—but he wasn’t interested. He simply stared at me, those black eyes boring into my face until finally I stopped talking. He disappeared into the crowd soon after, and I just chalked it up to a random weird occurrence. Maybe he thought he recognized me or something. Or maybe he was just an oddball.

But now it dawns on me that he probably did recognize me, and he had been hunting for me all this time, only to find me selling produce in the south of Italy with hardly a care in the world. I swallow hard. There’s only one choice for me, isn’t there? I certainly can’t let the Cleaners hurt my friends here. No. I have to walk out of this pantry and hand myself over before anyone gets seriously injured. That’s what I have to do. It’s the right choice.

“Let me go,” I manage to whisper behind the man’s hand. He shakes his head again.

“No,” he mouths at me. Then, still holding onto me, he edges toward the back of the pantry and scoots aside a barrel of canned goods to reveal a trap door in the floor. I stare at it in confusion. Has that really been here all this time? Just waiting for me in case I need to break away?

I guess I underestimated the severity of my situation. These Cleaners aren’t like Pietro—they didn’t give up on hunting me after I left town. They followed me here, like bloodhounds to a scent. And suddenly, it’s like the past six weeks don’t even matter. I was a ticking time bomb all along, a liability to all the wonderful women here who have become almost like family.

“You go. Downstairs. Find the door. Run the tunnel. Don’t stop,” the man explains in broken English, his voice scarcely audible. “Come to a field. Keep running. Find the villa. Old. Ruins. Hide there and wait.”

“What about my friends?” I ask, my eyes filling with tears.

“I protect them,” he says simply. And I know there’s nothing I can do. I have to believe him. I have to believe that he can save them. Still, I hesitate.

“Worse for them if you stay,” the man adds, sensing my reluctance.

I can feel another piece of my heart shattering. This is the way it has to be.

So without wasting another second, I climb down through the trap door, down a rickety ladder, and find myself standing behind a shelf of odds and ends. When I step out around the shelf, I realize I’m in a basement.

I knew about the basement, of course. It’s where we keep old clothes, preserved produce, and other stuff we don’t have a place for. I’ve been in here before, but never through a trap door in the ceiling. I look around, floundering in the low light as I run my hands up and down the grimy walls until I find a door handle. With my heart fluttering, I turn the handle and step through the door into a cold, dark tunnel. I take a deep breath, close the door behind me, and start running with only the light of my cell phone screen to guide me. I run nearly blind, tears blurring my vision as I try not to sob, my footsteps soft on the muddy ground. I keep running until my legs feel weak, until my chest feels tight. I walk for a little while to regain my breath, and then I start running again.

I don’t know how long I’m underground, but when I finally come to a round wooden door and push it open to expose myself to the cool air, the sky is dark overhead. I climb out of the ground and close the hatch behind me, covering it with dirt before I keep going. Just as the man described, I’m in a field. It looks to be the middle of nowhere. I can’t hear anything but the wind.

I force myself not to think about Francesca. I force myself not to think about Daniela and the other women I left behind, the new family I’ve already lost and possibly endangered. I trudge onward, my feet feeling heavy and my heart racing. My lungs hurt. I’m out of breath, feeling dizzy and weak. But I have to keep going. For all I know, the Cleaners are hot on my trail, and I have no idea what my next move is. Where the hell can I go? Where can I hide?

These guys will always find me, won’t they?

I keep walking through the dark, my phone battery quickly draining. I turn it off to save battery power and just walk blindly in the night, hoping the Cleaners don’t find me before I can reach the next checkpoint. After what feels like hours and hours of walking, the massive shape of a white building looms in front of me. I squint in the moonlight, trying to make sense of the shape I’m seeing. I take in pillars, piles of rubble. A marble archway.

My heart skips a beat. There it is. That has to be it. The old ruined villa.

I race forward, hurrying to climb over the broken-down walls and slip through a busted window, tearing my sweater on a piece of jagged glass, but feeling grateful it wasn’t my skin that got slashed. I stumble into what looks to have once been a grand living room of some kind, and I all but collapse on the concrete beneath me, out of breath and overwhelmed.

As soon as I’m sitting down, my body aches with relief. I lean back against a marble column and try to catch my breath, closing my eyes as the tears trickle down my cheeks. And now that I’m still, it’s like all those horrible thoughts catch up to me.

Is this the way it’s always going to be?

Temporary lodging? Temporary friends?

The constant threat of being discovered and chased out of hiding, only to find another little hole in the ground to cower inside? Am I going to spend the rest of my life on the run? And what about when my baby is born? How the hell can I raise a child like this—always running from one place to the next with no stability, no safety, no place to call home?

Am I going to end up this way over and over again? Alone and afraid?

Bruno’s face swims to the front of my mind. Smiling at me as he knelt down to ask me to be his wife. I said yes. I said yes, but it doesn’t matter because he’s gone and he’s never coming back and I’m never going to be anybody’s wife.

I’m so damn tired. I need to sleep. My whole body is giving up. I pull my knees up inside the oversized sweater and lie down on my side, the cold concrete instantly giving my body hell. It’s not comfortable, and it’s almost certainly not safe, but that’s just the way my life is going to be from now on. The sooner I get used to it, the easier it will be.

I hope.

So I lie here quietly, breathing in the dusty air of the crumbling old villa, slowly drifting off into the closest thing to sleep I can hope for. I don’t know how much time passes, and I don’t know if I ever actually fall asleep for real, but out of the darkness and the silence comes the unmistakable sound of footsteps echoing in my broken-down fortress. I sit up, sleepy and defeated, to await my assailant. Will he take me captive? Torture me? Kill me?

It doesn’t matter anymore. Not really. In a way, I almost welcome it. I’m tired of being on the run. Maybe it’s time to just face up to the monster, let fate do what it will with me.

A voice splits the silence, deep and questioning.

“Passerotta mia?”