My reflection agrees. Sweat-smudged mascara circles my eyes, the cotton blouse I put on this morning sticks to me like a thin coat of glue, and my hair is either matted down or sticking out in all the wrong places. I twist the tap and towel off, smiling a little sheepishly at Patrick, who seems much less drunk and much more concerned.

“Didn’t feel so hot,” I say. “Must have been the pizza.”

He holds a hand up to my forehead, a cool, clean doctor’s hand, the skin of it pink and scrubbed. For an instant, I think of Lorenzo’s hands and how different they are. I think of how Patrick’s hands might not be as clean as they seem.

“You never get sick, babe,” he says. And then, with a small laugh, “Well, unless you’re preggers. You know, with four kids, that amounts to a full year of private bathroom time.”

I try to laugh along with him, but my voice sounds hoarse, wrong.

“You’re not—” Patrick’s eyes dart from my face to my belly, and he frowns. He’s not stupid, and he’s a doctor. Between the math and his textbook grasp of embryology, he must know it’s impossible. Our sex life over the past several months means that I’m either three days pregnant or carrying around a beach ball.

“Of course not,” I say. “I really think it was the pizza. Tasted off.”

“All right, then. Come on back to bed.” He takes my hand and shuts the light in the half bath off, leading me out of my midnight reading room.

“Be there after I get a drink of water,” I say. “And I might as well call Papà while I’m up.”

When his footsteps fade down the hallway toward our room, I slide the envelope out of its temporary hiding place, backtrack to the front porch, and reverse the process of stealing. I stop in the kitchen for a glass of ice water and suck it down while I dial my father’s cell number from memory.

“Pronto,” he says, sounding not like my father at all but like a much older man.

“Papà, it’s Jean. How’s Mamma?”

His voice tells me everything, even before he says the words “brain damage” and “that area that begins with a W” and “why can’t I talk to her anymore?” “Can’t you fix her, Gianna?”

“Of course I can.” I pull as much confidence into my voice as possible, hoping it camouflages the telltale jitter I feel in my throat. “Soon, Papà. Real soon.”

After one more glass of water, most of which I end up patting onto my face, I walk down the hall to our room.

Patrick is snoring again.

I lay the keys on the carpet, just next to his nightstand, and crawl into bed for six hours of sleep.

Chapter Forty-eight

FORTY-EIGHT

In my nightmare, the kids are gone.