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“Whatugh? I wasn’t her only love either. I just ended up being better.”

“What was it about Claudia, the Italian girl?”

“I don’t know. When you’re young, you can’t define love, or maybe you don’t want to. Love is the divine mystery of life when it works out.”

“But it didn’t.”

“In Italy, it isn’t what the girl wants; it’s what her father will allow. That guy hated me and sent me packing. No daughter of his was going to marry a stonecutter. AnAmerigan. I wasn’t worthy of her.”

“But your roots are in Carrara. You’re as Italian as they are!”

“Didn’t matter to him. All he saw was Yankee Doodle Louie. I never said goodbye to Claudia, and I didn’t go back because I met Lil and that was that.” Uncle Louie squints at me without lifting his head off the pillow. “You all right over there?”

“It’s a lot, Uncle Louie. A lot to take in.” I have wrapped the cord from the window shade around my index finger so tightly the digit is turning blue. I unwind it.

“Who knows what I would have become if I had stayed in Italy?”

“You did all right. You did great. But the first thing we’ll do when you’re out of here is close down the Elegant Gangster. From now on, everything on the books. I mean it, Uncle Louie.”

“Whatever you want.”

I breathe deeply. “It’s not a matter of choice; it’s what’s right. And let’s get this straight. You’re going to do what the doctors say and get well and get the hell out of here.”

“Here,” he says. “Take my phone. If you have any further questions about the business, call Googs. He can be elusive, so be persistent.”

“Which business?” I jab, and immediately feel guilty.

Uncle Louie is pale. I squeeze his hand. “I want you to listen while I still retain my facilities.”

“Faculties.”

“Them too. There’s a laptop, you’ll find it in my suit closet upstairs off the bedroom. There’s a hard drive. It’s in the medicine chest—in the powder room nobody uses off the kitchen.”

“The one with the kooky wallpaper.”

“That one. Scalamandre number 412. A hundred and seventy-five bucks a roll with no repeat. Worth every penny. Open the medicine chest. The hard drive is stored in a perfume box about yea big.” He pinches his thumb and forefinger to measure. “It’s either in Moonwind or To a Wild Rose. The whole freakin’ medicine chest is filled with overstock Lil saved from back when she was an Avon lady.”

Evidently Uncle Louie wasn’t the only one double-dipping.

He continued. “The hard drive is in there. Find it. Put the drive in my laptop. If you put it in yours, they could come after you.”

“Who?”

“The feds. They may not understand my business model.”

“Neither do I!” I feel my throat close.

“Breathe, Jess. It’s not that complicated. Everything is on the hard drive. There are lists. My contacts. The billing. The shipping. All of it. You will figure it out.”

I inhale and exhale as I straighten the blanket on one side of the bed and walk around to smooth it on the other. “We’ll deal with all of this tomorrow,” I tell my uncle as he sleeps. I have leaned down to fluff the pillow when the square silver machine over the bed begins to beep. Soon the beeps accelerate and get louder until they blast like a smoke alarm. I panic and try to follow the wires to the electrodes on his chest and the IV in his arm when the nurses burst through the door.

“Out!” a nurse shouts at me as she crosses to my uncle. The rest of the nurses surround the bed; one carries paddles.

“What? Why?” I ask, but my plea is lost in the chaos as I’m pushed against the wall.

The nurse climbs on the bed and straddles Uncle Louie. She places the paddles on Uncle Louie’s chest. The paddles seem huge and Uncle Louie small. She presses. His body lurches off the mattress to no avail. The machines go silent. The nurse climbs off the bed.

“We’re sorry,” is the next thing I hear. “Are you his daughter?”