“Of course she wants to see him. She loves him!”
“Well, love isn’t everything,” he grumbled. “Giorgio loved Alessio. That didn’t make him a good father. Without a little more — work, application, intent — it is insufficient. Leo and that poor woman. I don’t know…”
He had that reproachful look in his eye she knew by now.
“You should call your son,” she urged.
He emitted a short, dry laugh. “I should. Perhaps he’ll remember why we’ve been at war with one another all this time. For the life of me I can’t. Also…” — he raised a stubby finger — “we can share the experience of getting fired. Over a good meal and some wine, at his expense.”
“Arturo?”
“No, don’t push me. I should. I will. I promise.”
She kissed him once on his bristly cheek. Arturo Messina was, at heart, a lonely man, she thought. And loneliness was one human misfortune which could so easily be changed.
He cleared his throat and got up to go.
“We will stay in touch?” he asked. “After you return to Rome?”
“There’s a wedding in the summer. If you’d like to come.”
Arturo Messina’s face brightened with sudden joy. “A wedding!” he echoed, delighted. “A wedding! I will raise a toast to that this evening. To you and your lucky young man.”
She surveyed the hospital room. “Lucky?”
“You’re alive, you’re young, and you’re in love. What’s that weighed against a few stupid medical statistics? Yes. I count you very fortunate indeed. They will be wonderful children when they come. I cannot wait to meet them.”
He took out an old blue beret, placed it on his head, and grinned from ear to ear.
“Arturo is a noble name for a boy, you know,” he added. “A domani, Emily Deacon. I shall return — with flowers — in due course.”
He bobbed his beret and was gone. In the empty room, she watched the minute hand on the clock lurch forward a cog: time passing. Lost moments, opportunities swept away on the wind, forever.
Soon there would be the sound of Nic’s footsteps. Soon there would be the touch of his hand.
She lay back on the soft white pillow and closed her eyes, listening. Outside, the children played in the street under the moonlight, voices rising shapeless towards the black starlit sky, innocent and unknowing in their search for a word, a deed, an act, a thought… anything that might give their lives form.
About the Author
A former staff writer on The Times, David Hewson lives in Kent, where he is at work on his next novel, The Garden of Evil, which Delacorte will publish in 2008.
The Seventh Sacrament is the fifth novel in a crime series which began with the acclaimed A Season for the Dead, set in Rome and featuring Detective Nic Costa.