Chapter 159
IT WAS STILL DARK when I arrived at Teo’s apartment building, but the lavender light of morning was pushing against the horizon, and already I could hear birdsong.
The intercom crackled when I hit the button for S.
Manca, and I closed my eyes, picturing Teo asleep, then waking to the insistent buzz.
The receiver was installed on a wall near the front door, so it would take him three, maybe four seconds to get out of bed and across the apartment.
I counted one, two, three, four, but there was nothing.
I hit the button again. And again. Still nothing.
I looked down the hill in the direction of town, wondering where he could be if not here at his apartment. It was too early to wake Francesca and ask if she’d seen him, so I sat on a retaining wall in front of the building, and I waited for the island to come to life.
Morning came in tiny increments. Across the street, a man kick-started his moped and puttered down the hill; above my head, I heard the slap of a mop, heavy with water, on the tile floor of a balcony.
Soon I heard someone turn on a radio, and then it was the garbled voices of children, who did not know or care that it was Sunday morning and their parents preferred to sleep.
The sky turned pink and then orange and then, finally, blue.
Just when I had begun to worry that Teo might never show up, I heard a car chugging up the hill.
It was his Bianchina, and I’d never been so glad to see it.
I jumped to my feet and waved, but he didn’t see me, so I stood by and watched as he parked the car.
He got out, and I moved toward him. By the time he noticed me, I was maybe a half-dozen feet away.
“Hey,” I said. I guess I expected him to say something, but he didn’t. He just stood there, taking me in. Like he was seeing a ghost.
“I’m really sorry for stringing you along all summer,” I started. “And for missing out on the opportunity to meet your—”
“Stop,” he whispered, and for a moment, I worried he was going to send me away. Instead, he started to weep. “I saw your car, up by the pharmacy. I thought you were dead.”
“Oh, Teo…”
“I was talking to people who were telling me they’d seen this pregnant American woman pulled from a car, and I knew it had to be Laura. I was sure you were with her, and I just thought that was it.”
I told him how we had indeed been forced from the car but that somehow Afonso had been there and had made it possible for us to escape.
“Afonso?” Teo said with a slight laugh as he wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand.
“Francesca might think he’s an idiot, but I’m here to tell you he’s not all bad.”
We were both laughing then, and Teo knelt before me. I laid my hands on his shoulders, and he reached for me, wrapping his arms around my waist. We stayed like that for a long time.
When Teo returned to his feet, he told me Bruno had been able to confirm that the white powder on the seafloor was asbestos.
Nothing you want in a marine habitat, but it beat the alternative.
Teo had spent the last forty-eight hours trying to figure out exactly what had happened to the U.S.S.
Seneca and how long it would be in La Maddalena.
Early indications were that it would take months to make the sub seaworthy enough for the long surface voyage back to Charleston.
I asked Teo if he knew about the leak in the containment room. He didn’t, so I filled him in on what had happened to Bobby and Kenny and the other guys on the Nuclear Repair team.
“Are they going to be okay?” Teo asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“It just keeps getting worse.”
I agreed, and we talked at some length about the probability that the radioactive particles that had been let loose in the sub would at some point find their way into the sea.
“It sounds like the sub’s interior is definitely contaminated. And the gangway leading to the tender. And maybe even parts of the tender,” I said. “But that can all be mitigated, right?”
“Sure,” said Teo. “If you’ve got smart people working on it.”
Paul was plenty smart, but he was also meant to rotate out of here in a little over two weeks.
“The biggest concern is always the reactor,” Teo said, and I told him that Bobby had insisted it was intact.
“Do you believe him?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I do.”
“So maybe we’re okay?”
“This time,” I said. “But what about next time?”
“You sound like a real Italian,” he said with a smile.
“Speaking of that…”
He looked at me, his eyes hopeful.
“Paul knows about us.”
“You told him?”
“I did,” I said. “But as it turns out, he’s known for a while.”
After I explained that Naval Intelligence—Angela, specifically—had been tailing Teo for years, he let out a strangled laugh. “Wait, what did you say to Paul?”
“That I was sorry for making such a mess of everything.”
I knew Teo was terrified that I was about to tell him Paul and I had decided to make things work, so I hurried to get to the next part. “I also told him that I loved you.”
“You did?” said Teo as he took a tentative step toward me.
“I did.”
“Does that mean you’ll stay? With me?” Those last two words were a whisper. Maybe also a prayer.
“I want to,” I said, “if you’ll have me.”
His mouth broke into a wide grin. “You’re serious? You’re going to stay?”
“I’m going to stay,” I said as I stepped into his waiting arms and a future that, in my wildest dreams, I had not seen coming.