Chapter 34: Our Wounded Wait

Two years later, on a hot June morning, the graduating class of the medical college sat in rows on the harbor lawn.

They wore black gowns, and the sun made them miserable.

Dante sat in the fourth row with his cap in his lap.

He was twenty-eight, and he had learned to take a pulse and read a chart.

He had also learned to sleep in a door bed with one hand hanging off the edge.

Some nights Javier reached down in the dark and took the hand, and that was all.

It was the longest courtship in the history of the Rossi family, and Dante would have gone on for ten more years.

The dean stood at the lectern with a list.

"First rank," he said. "Highest marks in the history of this college. Javier."

The whole lawn rose.

Javier walked up the steps in his gown with his glasses on.

The gold amulet hung outside his collar, where everyone could see it.

He took the diploma in both hands.

He looked at the crowd, and found a freckled man on his feet beside Maria, and found Dante.

His mouth shook, and he smiled.

"Rossi," the dean read next, and had to stop, and began again. "Dante Rossi. Pass with distinction."

The lawn laughed and applauded.

Dante climbed the steps and shook the dean's hand, and the dean held it a moment too long.

Afterward there were photographs, and Daniel crying into a handkerchief.

Maria wore the white fur coat in June.

She told anyone who stood still that she had always known.

"You knew nothing," Daniel said.

"I knew everything," Maria said. "I knew before him."

At seven that evening Dante drove the long road into the foothills with Javier in the passenger seat.

The estate gate stood open, as it always did when Javier came.

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