“I’m going to throw away the garbage. Spazzatura,” Andrew said, carefully enunciating each syllable. “Then I’m going to run to the Punta.” He gestured at the horizon. “There are these paths with stairs that rise up into the hills, then down again and along the slopes, over a footbridge and a ravine with a little stream. They lead you all the way down to the water. The whole thing takes a couple of hours. This place is…” He looked around. “Enchanted, like a fairy tale.”

Henry had never much liked fairy tales. To him they were such bleak stories, with broken families, dead mothers, children who are lost, abandoned, stolen, or blighted—though sometimes also improbably, impossibly, lucky.

“Will I see you later?”

Andrew shrugged. “It all depends.”

“On what?”

“Costanza, I guess. And you.” He paused. “Dad.”

“Yes?”

“I think—” Andrew hesitated. “I think she still cares for you.”

He took off. He deposited the garbage bag, the spazzatura, in a large can farther along the street, then broke into a run. An uphill run that was steady, confident, and seemingly effortless.

Henry looked back at the water. Its blue burned into his eyes. If he could just follow one blue scallop until it floated off the scene, beyond the hill. Toward the Punta, Andrew called it. Just one crescent wave. Everything would be clear then.

Henry tried to fix his eye on a single shape, but the more he focused on it, the more elusive it became. He began again and again.

Finally he got up, crossed the street, and approached the gate.

He paused there. As he was staring at the brass nameplates and the buttons next to them, the gate buzzed, then popped open.

Henry looked beyond the open gate, and up the stairs. He could only see halfway. The stairs were old and cracked. Moss was growing in their corners. They were steep.

He tried to imagine himself climbing them. He pictured himself rising up and coming into the sunlight again, in the garden at the top of the stairs. There she would be, thicker and rounder, certainly, following the pregnancy, likely aglow in the way of new mothers. She was likely to look tired too, from the birth, and the feeding. And the nights. But, being Costanza, she was certain also to be beautiful; worn down maybe, but still radiant.

Would there be a table in the garden, and chairs, an arbor to cast some shade against all this bright winter sunlight?

Would they sit there and talk? What could she say, really?

What could he say?

What would he feel, what would he think, when he looked into the baby’s face?

Henry’s imagination, his anticipation, stopped there. All of his body, it seemed, was frozen, paralyzed—except for his heart. His heart was beating, pounding, away.