Costanza saw him all morning. What did that mean? That she was waiting to speak to him, to apologize to him, or have him apologize to her, or to tell him, or ask him, what? Did she expect him to pick up where they left off nine months earlier? Now that she had her baby, did she want Henry back, did she want to come back to Henry? Her baby: who was not his genetic offspring but who, if they found a way (what way? How?) to resume, he would be raising, as he’d raised Justin and Andrew, who were also not biologically his? Well, he would not be raising her as he’d raised Justin and Andrew, since he was no longer that father; that man.

Henry turned to look again at the sea. So did Andrew.

“It’s hard to look away,” Henry said. “From all this blue.”

“I sat here a bunch of hours myself, when I first came.”

“Between the water and…” Henry looked back at the house and pointed. “That’s Costanza’s room, with the laundry outside?”

“Yes. The terrace is off her bedroom. It gets all the sun. It’s the best place to dry the baby’s clothes.”

The baby’s clothes. Drying in the sun, the tiny strips of white cloth looked like beacons, or flags—of surrender?—flapping in the breeze.

Andrew followed his gaze. “Maria Rosaria put Lia’s laundry out this morning, even though the sky was so dark when we got up. She said she knew this sky, she knew the rain would pass quickly.”

“Lia.” A chill came over Henry. It began in his feet and shot all the way to his scalp.

Andrew nodded. “Costanza named her for Grandpa. She said she couldn’t name her for her father because he chose death. Grandpa instead, despite everything, she said, chose life.”

This was such deeply, such profoundly, uncharted ground. Henry hardly knew what to think, let alone how to act. A child, named for his father, had been born to his wife but was conceived by his son. She was his child and his grandchild, legally both, but genetically neither.

For once Henry refrained from further comment. What more could he add that would matter? Andrew would live all his life with what he had done, what he and Costanza had done together, and his experience of what he had done would likely change over the years in ways that no one could predict. Henry had Andrew—and Justin—to reckon with, just as Andrew now had Lia.

After a few moments, Henry said, “I hope, Andrew, that one day you and I might start to find our way back, or forward, to being connected again. Reconnected.”

“I think we already may have, Dad.” Andrew picked up the trash bag.

“Where’re you going?”