Chapter 24: Over the Christ

In June the sea over the Christ of the Abyss lay flat and green, and the dive boat hardly moved on its anchor.

I was twenty-two weeks along, too far to dive, and I sat on a folding chair in the shade of the canopy with my feet on a cooler.

My father sat beside me in his wheelchair with a hat over his white hair.

He could lift his left arm to the shoulder now.

He lifted it every few minutes to point at the water, to make sure I knew where it was.

"Papa, I know where the statue is."

He pointed again.

At the bow, Agnese poured coffee from a thermos into three cups and handed one to the old driver.

His shoulder had healed crooked, and he complained about it daily.

"Signora, it is too weak."

"Then make it yourself, old man, and see how you like it."

"I would, but my Don has forbidden me the stove."

"He burned the last pot," said Ettore.

"He burned it twice," I said.

Agnese laughed, a short dry laugh that I had not heard once in March.

She visited Dario on the first Sunday of every month in the prison above Marassi, and she came back quiet.

Nobody in the boat asked her about it.

Ilaria wrote to nobody, and nobody wrote back.

My father had not turned his face toward the letters.

Ettore came across the deck in his wetsuit with the wet hood pushed back and the old steel watch on his wrist.

He crouched in front of my chair, and the boat rocked a little under him.

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