Marisol’s seven-year-old daughter had taken it. She hadn’t meant any harm. She had found the shiny brass compass near the library and slipped it into her pocket, the way children sometimes do. Somehow, it had gone out with the moving boxes I had so carefully sealed beneath the tarp. The one irreplaceable object in the villa, the last thing my husband’s hands had touched, was now sitting inside an anonymous carton in the rain.”

I called Marisol. Not to threaten her, but to ask for help. For the first time, my sister and I had an honest conversation. I wasn’t calling as the commander or the wronged party. I was calling as a widow who had lost the last piece of her husband and needed another mother to help me find it. Marisol found the compass inside her daughter’s backpack, drove it back that night, and handed it to me through my newly locked gate. Neither of us knew what to say, so we said very little.