“The one in Bologna? I doubt it. My guess is that she will plead distance, or poverty, or some such combination, and Signora Mele will have to move. If she were truly interested in helping she’d have fetched her mother away years ago.”

“I’ll visit her there when I go to see Mamma,” Antonina offered. “That will help.”

“It certainly will, and she’ll be far safer there than alone in her apartment. All the same, I doubt she’ll be alive in six months. Not with her heart failing as it is.”

The way he said it, so baldly, and with such certainty, tore at Antonina’s heart. “Can’t it be treated with a diuretic?”

“Not when the heart is failing so rapidly. And it would only serve to make her miserable.”

“What was in the tincture?”

“A mild dose of digitalis. As I said, you’ll need to return tomorrow morning and again at supper to give her more. That will help a little.”

“But not enough to keep her at home?”

“No. And that small bottle is all I have. I doubt I’ll be able to procure more.”

“So we do nothing?” she asked, her voice rising. It was unsettling to see her father so resigned to a patient’s fate.

“No. Never nothing. We visit her, show her compassion, offer her help. That is very much more than nothing. And we will see her safely moved to the rest home.”

“I wish there was more we could do,” she fretted.

“Is that not the refrain of every decent doctor, every day of his—or her—working life?”

“I suppose. It’s only that . . .”

He waited for her to finish, though she was certain he already knew what she was going to say.

“You shouldn’t have to practice medicine like this. As if you’re some sort of criminal. Creeping through the dark. Having nothing to offer your patients beyond your attention and your sympathy.”

“I agree, but to do more is to risk arrest. And I can do nothing if I am confined to a prison camp.”

He was right, of course he was right, but the knowledge rankled. To stay, to wait, to let themselves drown as the waters rose around them?

“Why can’t we leave? Find our way to Spain? Or across the border to Switzerland?”

“I think of little else,” he said, regret shadowing his eyes. “But I cannot imagine how we might take your mother safely. The Swiss would certainly never let us through at one of the official crossings. Not with her so clearly unwell.”

“Then Spain—”

“No. They would be equally unwelcoming, and the journey across the sea is far too dangerous.”

“Then we sneak across the border. We’ll hire someone to help us—to help carry her. Mamma weighs hardly anything now.”