His father’s voice was beside him—when did that happen?—talking gently. That made Will smile, inwardly at least. He was speaking with the other being in the room, oddly unaware that Will was listening intently, though the words made little sense. He was still thinking in Italian (or was it French?) and he couldn’t concentrate on what his father was asking. He was instead drenched with an impression of Sicilian sunshine, the smell of lemons, the taste of the delicious wine grown on Etna; and most satisfyingly, the boat trip he had taken to Fonte Ciane, the lush clumps of papyrus rising from the water. A beautiful Sicilian girl had gone with him—no, she was from Tuscany—as they were the only ones waiting for the boat to appear, even though it was high season. The day was scorching, they had shared their supplies of water, bread, and fruit with each other and with the boatman. Her thick, black, curly tresses, hanging lower than her waist and scented like citrus blossom, floated out over the water on the warm wind. He told her, in desperately inadequate Italian, how he could imagine dolphins swimming about in her wavy hair; and she explained to him in Italian mixed with English the story of the nymph who was pursued by Alph, the ancient river, escaping his passion only with the aid of Artemis, who turned her into a spring. But the river had caught her in a last embrace, and the water turned brackish with their salty union. It had happened right here, she’d said. He hadn’t been sure if this was an invitation to a salty embrace, or a warning not to inflame the wrath of the goddess, but the day was utterly perfect in every sense. He would carry something of its scent, of its unexpectedness, and its chaste sensuality, to his last hour.

Henry Stafford’s long fingers came up involuntarily and took refuge in his gray but still thick head of hair, as though he wanted to hide himself. “We quarreled. It was so senseless.”

“Mr. Stafford,” the woman in a white uniform beside him suggested, “don’t go over the negative things. This is so unhelpful, really, for either one of you. Just talk to him: we never know how much they take in when they’re in a coma; but our understanding is that hearing is the last thing to go. He’s aware of things you and I can’t begin to fathom—on a plane quite beyond us. I’m a great believer in that.”