Chapter 15: Visiting Hours

I pressed the call button.

Then I took his hand and pried his fingers off the blanket one at a time.

"She's not here, Papa. It's me. It's only me."

His eyes went to the door again.

Then to me.

"Here," he said. "She... came here."

"When?"

"After... the stroke," he said. "Night."

The same week as the last slip.

The night nurse came in and checked his fever and his oxygen and said he was just having a bad dream.

I let her think so.

When she left, I pulled the plastic chair right up to the bed.

"Tell me," I said. "Take as long as you need."

It took him until the sun came up over the parking lot.

He told it in pieces.

Some of the pieces were a single word.

Some were only his hand, moving.

I wrote every one of them down on the back of his menu card.

Night. Nine days after the stroke. The nurse on her break.

Chiara in a cream coat, with flowers from the gift shop.

She'd sat on the edge of his bed and smiled at him.

She'd taken a slip out of her purse and put it on his tray table.

Two hundred thousand.

He'd shaken his head.

She'd said, "The Don says please."

He'd shaken it again.

Then she'd picked up his dead right hand.

My father showed me with his left.

He lifted his right hand off the blanket and wrapped the left around it, fingers over fingers, and squeezed.

"Pen," he said. "In... it."

She'd closed his own hand around the pen and moved it for him.

Pressed down hard.

Dragged it across the line.

That was why the signature wandered.

That was why the last letter was torn.

"She said," my father whispered. He stopped. He tried again. "She said... thank you."

I put the menu card face down on my knee.

I didn't trust my face.

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