I had everything planned out during the drive. Get in, talk, and get out. But when he lays a hand on my right cheek, the plans all go to hell. It isn’t Lorenzo leading me to the small bedroom off the kitchen, a dark and wood-paneled room with a single window we’ve never opened. Instead, I take his hand from where it rests on my cheek and lead him.

The last time, there wasn’t any talk. I still had my wrist counter on, and Lorenzo stayed silent, perhaps out of solidarity. He didn’t whisper my name, as Patrick did, and he had no words of pity. He simply didn’t speak as he moved over me and in me. We’re still quiet today, our hands and bodies reciting the words for us, but inside me are the clangs and horns of an orchestra playing full out.

After one round of love, we go at it again, this time slowly and unrushed, as if we had days or years, not hours. Not fractions of hours.

When he finally softens—in every sense of the word—Lorenzo lies on top of me, covering me with his body like a shield that blacks out the world.

“I can get you out,” he says.

For a moment, I’m not sure what he means, but he reaches over to where his jeans lie with mine, twin puddles of denim on the pine floor, and comes back to me with a slim burgundy booklet in his hand.

I recognize it immediately, the cogwheel and five-pointed star surrounded by branches—olive for peace, oak for strength.

“How did you get this?” I say, leafing through the new passport. Page two has my picture, but another woman’s name: Grazia Francesca Rossi. The birthdate matches my age, roughly.

“I have friends,” he says. “Well, friends who can be bought.”

“Who’s Grazia?” Rossi is a common surname in Italy, but the coincidence seems over the top. “Your sister?”

Lorenzo shakes his head. “No. I don’t have a sister. Grazia is—was—my wife.” He doesn’t wait for me to ask before explaining. “She died five years ago.”

“Oh,” I say, as if he’s given me a piece of ordinary news, a weather report, the outcome of the World Series, where the next Winter Olympics will be hosted. I don’t ask questions, and he doesn’t offer answers. “I can’t leave, you know.”

There’s no argument from him, only his hand running down my body, starting at my collarbone and stopping an inch above my sex. “What if it’s a girl, Gianna?”

Chapter Fifty-two

FIFTY-TWO

What if it is a girl?