Chapter 17: A Down Payment

Bridget called me at eleven at night, in the voice she uses for next of kin.

"Rosa's here," she said. "She's fine. Don't panic."

"Rosa Ferraro is at your hospital?"

"Chest pain. Her pressure's through the roof, but the EKG's clean." She dropped her voice. "Her son brought her in. The one you're not speaking to."

I was in the car in ten minutes.

I told myself it was for Rosa.

The emergency room waiting area was bright and cold and nearly empty.

Rosa lay behind a curtain in bay four, with a blood pressure cuff on her arm and a rosary wound around her other hand.

She was asleep, or pretending.

Luca sat on a plastic chair outside the curtain with his elbows on his knees and his coat in his lap.

He saw me and stood up.

He didn't speak.

He stood very still, waiting for me to tell him what I wanted.

Before I could answer, Bridget came around the nurses' station in her navy scrubs.

She walked straight up to him.

She is five foot ten, and she looked down at him without blinking.

"Mr. Ferraro," she said. "A word."

"Bridget," I said.

"Stay there, Wills."

I stayed.

She took him ten feet down the hall, to the window by the vending machines.

I heard every word, because she didn't lower her voice.

"My sister has not slept through a night since the wedding."

"I know."

"You knew for two years, and you let her sit at your mother's table and smile at nothing."

"I know."

"She told me about those dinners. She counted the words she understood."

"I did nothing," Luca said. "You're right about that."

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