Mine is currently in quarantine with one of Poe’s computer geeks. “Locked up tight in a building with no name somewhere in Washington,” I say. “Sure I can’t help in here?”

He flicks a dish towel at me. “Go on. Git. I don’t need no jive sous chefs in my kitchen.” We both laugh at his attempt at Southern fry-cook slang.

Well. That’s different.

After a lightning-quick round of old maid with the kids—Sonia manages a few careful words—I go to Patrick’s study, which he’s left unlocked, and call my parents. The Italian comes back slowly at first, then eases into a steady cadence, all vowels and rhyming syllables. Papà has nothing positive to say about the president, or the president’s brother, or pretty much any part of this country; Mamma is more subdued, quieter than usual.

“Tutto bene, Mammi?” I say.

She assures me everything’s fine, just a few headaches recently.

“You need to stop smoking,” I tell her.

“It’s Italy, Gianna. Everyone smokes.”

This much is true. Second to soccer matches, smoking is the national pastime, especially in our part of the South. I let it go for now and focus on happier talk. For a while, I listen as they tell me about the lemon and orange trees in the yard, the vegetable garden, the gossip about Signore Marco, the fishmonger, who is finally going to marry Signora Matilda, the baker. It’s about time—put together, Marco and Matilda must be 170 years old.

The axe falls when Mamma asks if I’m coming for a visit this summer. “You don’t want me to die all alone,” she says.

“Nobody’s dying, Mammi,” I say. Still, a cold current jitters up and down my spine. “Promise you’ll go see Dr. Michele, okay?”

Between the “Ciaos” and the kisses and the promises to talk again tomorrow, it takes a full ten minutes to end the call. If the Italian women had quotas like we do, they’d spend every last word on the goodbye part of a phone conversation.

Only after I’ve shut down FaceTime do I notice the manila envelope with its TOP SECRET stenciling on Patrick’s desk. Whoever came up with the idea of labeling classified documents with larger-than-life red stenciling that advertises—or at least hints at—the contents was a schmuck, I think. You might as well put a tag that says OPEN ME! on it. If it were up to me, I’d hide all secrets in back copies of Reader’s Digest.

Patrick whistles in the kitchen, and the kids are now arguing over whether Sam cheated at cards by swiping one queen of spades from another deck and hiding it in his shirtsleeve.