Page 120

Of all the sins I’ve committed in my life, it is bewildering to me that my sanity hinges on the breaths you take, on the beat of your heart, on that cyst not stealing you away from me.
I ache for you, mon ange.
The days that part us feel like an insurmountable distance.
Tell me we’ll be together again soon.
À toi pour toujours,
Savio
Chapter Thirty-Seven
My darling,
We will be together soon. I know it in my heart.
The doctors tell me I overexerted myself in Rome. I truly needed their multimillion-dollar bills to inform me of that. But all is well. I am, as you might say, on the mend.
But I miss you too, my love.
I lie here, in this miserable hospital room, hour after hour. Mom and Dad spend the whole day with me (despite their fury at my disappearance) but the solitude after visiting time is over is more than I can bear.
Some nights, the future is all I think about.
I found out we were right today—I’m pregnant.
My parents don’t know what to think. I told them about you, of course.
The fact you’re a priest has them suspecting you’re a delusion, but I think, the fact you are what you are helps? Bizarre, I know. I have to figure that they believe my brain would pick someone eminently more respectable for a delusion—like a guy in finance with a trust fund. Or a politician who wants to change the world. (Ha.)
Mom’s more devout than Dad and I can sense her disapproval of you leaving the Church, but when I told her the circumstances of you aiding the police with their inquiries, she begrudgingly admitted she’s looking forward to meeting the father of her grandson.
No, I don’t know if it’s a boy I’m carrying, but I KNOW. In my heart, I know.
My dad wonders how a priest could impregnate me while still ordained, and that was a conversation I would like to avoid in the future despite knowing it’ll come up a dozen or so times.
(Sorry about that.)
I can’t wait for you to meet them though. Dad will be his usual grizzly self, but he loves me, and he will see that you do too, and that will unite you. Mom will embrace you before he does. (She’ll work on him. Don’t worry. :*)
I wonder how your parents will react to me…
Oh! Diana’s here to visit for a few days before she’s too deep into her pregnancy to travel. When my parents met her for the first time, they looked at her like she was a genie from a lamp I’d rubbed.
Honestly, their faces… If I were an artist, I’d have drawn their reactions for posterity! It was hilarious.
Tonight, when I’m all alone, I’m going to stare at the heavens and I’m going to think of you. I know you’ll feel my regard. I want you to touch yourself to thoughts of me. To the harmony we created together. I want to know how it feels. I want to know what image is in your mind when you come.
Tell me everything, my love.
Spare me no detail.
I love you,
Ton ange
Chapter Thirty-Eight