Serafina bit her lip. “His chances?”
The surgeon shook his head. “The next seventy-two hours are critical, but he seems in excellent health otherwise. So far, he’s been lucky. If it had entered his left side, well…”
“Oh, thank the Virgin.”
“Thank modern medical practice,” the doctor said, “and thank a poor shot. A woman shot him, I understand. Close range. Maybe she got the sides mixed up.” He smiled.
“Why isn’t he awake?”
He shrugged. “His body has had a shock. Each person reacts differently. Right now, he’s in a deep sleep. We believe he can hear. Talk to him. Sing to him. Last year we had a woman who was shot by her husband, a similar circumstance, but in reverse. The bullet lodged in her lung. It collapsed. We removed the bullet, and she was in a coma for days, but pulled through. Today the man is in prison, not for long unfortunately, but she is doing fine.” The doctor paused. “Your friend has how many years-forty?”
Serafina nodded. “More or less.”
Nuns in blue habits and starched cornettes moved soundlessly and made sure Loffredo was clean and comfortable.
“When will he wake up?” Serafina asked a tall, plump sister.
The nun shrugged. “We don’t know, my dear. Pray. I’ve seen far worse survive and walk out a few weeks later.”
Doctors came in and listened to Loffredo’s pulse. Most did not stop to talk with Serafina.
For her part, Serafina continued a long monologue. She told Loffredo how much she loved him, how she always had. She told him what the weather was like, what she saw out the window down the hall, how many beds were in the ward, how many patients with bandaged legs, whatever she could think of. She told him how sorry she was that this had happened. It was her fault, all her fault, but the care was so good here. Indeed life was so good, not at all like it was at home. In Oltramari, Serafina told him, life had become untenable. No response.
Later, she squeezed Loffredo’s hand, but felt no response.
Two days later, he hadn’t awakened.
“Keep talking to him,” the plump sister said. “The worst thing you can do is give up. Patients who wake up tell us they were soothed by the voices of their loved ones.”
Serafina sang to him, and laughed at her singing. She read to him from a book Teo lent her about Notre Dame and gargoyles and love. She squeezed his hand.
No response.
“Read the paper to him,” Rosa said. “And by the way, Carmela and Giulia are packing up our things from the hotel. We’ll take a boat from Marseille as soon as Loffredo is well enough to travel. No need to return to Paris.”
“Oh, but I want to talk with Busacca and Valois. There is much unfinished business. I think we still must talk with Gaston and Sophie’s oldest son. We need to find out more about the dead woman. And what about the stolen photos?”
“Busacca you can see at home. Valois is on his way. No doubt he’ll have all the answers.”
“Hear that, Loffredo? Valois is on his way. He must like you.”
No response.
Three nuns came in and told Serafina to take a walk down the hall while they changed and washed the patient.
Two days later, the chief surgeon paid a visit. He seemed concerned. He frightened Serafina.
“Pray, my dear.”
“I’m praying to the Virgin all the time. I haven’t prayed so much in all my life, eh, Loffredo?” She squeezed his hand. “Maybe I’ll call you Otto. You hate the name so, it might wake you up.”
No response.
Rosa bent to him. “Time to get up for school, Loffredo,” she said and squeezed his hand.
He squeezed Rosa’s hand.
The madam looked like a cat who’d landed in a bowl of liver. “There. Did you see that? He squeezed my hand. Just got to use the right words. He’s waking up.”
Serafina’s heart began to pound. She thought perhaps Rosa was imagining, so she squeezed Loffredo’s hand.
She felt no response from him and her heart sank.
Then he squeezed her hand.
Serafina laughed and cried at the same time. “Time to open your eyes.”
In a moment, his eyes blinked and he smiled at her. “Where am I?”
“In a hospital.”
“I must have slept.”
Three days later, Loffredo was walking up and down the ward, anxious to leave. He and the doctor had become friends and exchanged addresses.
“I’m impressed with French hospitals,” Loffredo told him. “We have a lot to learn from you, and I am grateful for your care. When I get back to Oltramari, I’ll talk to my surgeon friends and see if we can’t arrange an official visit.”
Serafina teared up. She missed home. She missed her family, but she was grateful indeed for the miracle of Loffredo.
A few days after Loffredo was released, Serafina’s group sat in the hotel garden enjoying the sunshine and one another when Rosa, who’d returned from shopping with Tessa, said, “We have a visitor.”
It was Valois. “I wanted to thank you in person for your work. I’ll admit there were times I doubted you, times I thought you’d overstepped your bounds, many times I didn’t agree with you, but you are a fine detective.”
“Bravo,” Loffredo said.
“You’ve forgotten something,” Rosa said. “She is maddening, truly maddening at times.”
“Elena’s body was shipped to Versailles and laid to rest after Busacca identified it,” Valois said, “And now we can close the case. You agree, of course.”
“Not so fast, I’m afraid,” Serafina said. “We have more work. I’ll write to you from home. Won’t the insurance company press charges?”
“Perhaps, but that’s separate and their concern. We’ve released the Italians who followed you.”
She nodded. “I must take care of the don in Oltramari, I’m afraid. Do you know the identity of the woman murdered in the Rue Cassette?”
He shook his head. “A streetwalker. A woman of thirty years or so. We think she was living in a poor neighborhood without husband or children. She hadn’t been seen in quite some time. What she was doing on the Rue Cassette, we don’t know.”
Serafina pursed her lips. “So, at the very least, we need to find out more about her.”
“Before Haussmann redesigned Paris, there were terrible slums, but now the displaced have to live somewhere, don’t they? And so they find little warrens in which to congregate. I’m afraid there are establishments which attract them, and Cafe Odile is one, but we haven’t found her identity as yet, and so we buried her in a common grave.”
Serafina frowned into the distance, lost in thought.
“And I have something for you from Busacca,” Valois said. “Two thick envelopes. In one, your tickets for your passage on the pack boat, Niger, leaving Saturday from Marseille for Palermo.”
“How many tickets?”
“Six. Carmela stays in Paris for the moment, but there’s one for Loffredo, your husband to be, I think?” He smiled. “At least that’s what Francoise tells me. She said to say hello and hopes we’ll meet again soon.”
Serafina looked at Loffredo. He smiled.
Valois continued. “There is a second envelope, and Busacca asks that you not read it until you’re home and surrounded by your family. But from what he tells me, I have a feeling this is not the last time we’ll be working together.”
For a while Serafina was alone with her thoughts of Don Tigro and the reckoning that awaited her in Oltramari. Despite the warmth of the Midi, she felt a chill. “Another thing I don’t yet know is who took the photographs from your desk. I’d like to see them. I wonder if I would have known from those images that the dead woman was not Elena.”
“We believe men who had access to my office and the photographer’s rooms were thieves hired by Elena.” Valois shrugged. “Beyond that-”
“So there’s another unknown,” Serafina said.