Chapter 13: Sign Here

Tancredi stopped the truck at the corner, a block from the Montanari gate.

Corrado and Teo sat in the back with the nurse's folder between them.

"Nobody says a word until tonight," I said.

"Not to Nonno?" Teo asked.

"Nonno already knows. Not to Papà, not to the guards, not to Cosima."

"She'll see it on our faces," Corrado said.

"Then look tired. You've been up all night, that part is true."

Corrado almost smiled.

The nurse had gone back to the hospital in a cab.

She had the carbon page in her cardigan, pinned to the inside of the pocket.

"If she sees me alone, she'll push," I said. "So I'll let her push."

Tancredi turned in the seat.

"Call me the moment she does."

"I will."

"Mirella."

"I will."

He held my eyes for a second longer than the words needed.

Then I got out and walked up the hill alone.

The gate guard let me through without a word.

Last night he would have asked who I was.

Cosima was sitting on the stairs of the garage apartment in a cream coat, with a paper cup of coffee in each hand.

She held one out.

"You look awful," she said. "Take it."

I took it.

It was hot, and it had the right amount of sugar.

She remembered how I took my coffee, and that made me angrier than anything she'd done in the hospital.

"You were out all night," she said.

"I was at the hospital."

"Until six in the morning?"

"I sat with Nonno."

"The nurse said he was asleep."

"I sat anyway."

She studied me over her cup.

I kept my face tired and a little sullen, the way a girl looks who has been up all night and is tempted.

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