The Don's Dying Wish novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: Father and Son

We went in two cars.

I drove my own car up the front drive.

The Don's nurse had told the man at the door that the wife was coming to sit with the old man.

The driver took Marcello in the van, lights off, down the service lane behind the garden wall.

The Brancato house was dark except for one lamp upstairs.

The guard at the door looked me over and let me in without a word.

He had his phone out before I reached the stairs.

I climbed past the clock and went into the west bedroom.

The Don's nurse was standing by the window in her cardigan.

"The back door's open," she whispered. "I'll bring him up the servants' stairs."

"Where's the new one?"

"Asleep in the east room. She takes a pill." The nurse's mouth went thin. "Her own, for once."

She slipped out.

I sat down by the bed.

Ambrogio was smaller than he'd been two weeks ago.

His cheeks had fallen in, and his hands lay on the blanket.

But his eyes were open, and they were on the door.

"Is he coming?"

"He's coming."

"Walking?"

"You'll see."

We heard him before we saw him.

Slow steps on the back stairs, one, then a pause, then another.

The nurse's voice, low, telling him to take the rail.

His voice, lower, telling her he didn't need it.

The old man's hand closed on the blanket.

The door opened.

Marcello stood in it.

He was wearing my father's navy cardigan over a white shirt, and Amalia had cut his hair short that afternoon.

He looked like a man.

Not a patient, not a body under a sheet.

He stood there for a second with his hand on the doorframe, breathing hard from the stairs.

Then he let go of it.

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