The Reincarnationist

Chapter 37

Rome, Italy-Friday, 3:25 p.m.

Josh collected the bouquet of flowers, bottle of wine and two giant stuffed animals that he’d asked the concierge to procure for him while he was packing and got into the waiting town car he’d ordered. He had a pilgrimage to make on his way to the Fiumicino airport.

The stop was only a fifteen-minute detour, but he gave himself an extra ninety minutes so he wouldn’t need to rush.

Under a grape arbor, the girls were having what appeared to be a tea party with their dolls, but they stopped to stare at him as he got out of the car with the gifts and started up the walk. They didn’t recognize him, but then he hadn’t expected them to. It had been more than a year since he’d come to their house after the funeral on what must have been the saddest day of their lives.

“Mama! Mama!” the smaller of them called as she ran ahead to announce the visitor’s arrival. As he approached, the elder sister, Dianna, eyed him suspiciously and positioned herself to the left of the door almost as if she were, ironically he thought, standing guard.

Tina greeted him warmly and then told both her daughters that it was all right and to go back outside-or at least that was what Josh thought she said with his limited knowledge of Italian. Cecelia made a move to leave, then stopped, turned around and asked her mother a question. Tina laughed, reached into a cabinet, pulled out a box of cookies and handed it to her.

“She is too smart and knows just when I am too busy for an argument.”

Sitting at the kitchen table while Tina fetched a vase and filled it with water, Josh asked how she was doing. She used a combination of gestures and accented English to tell him that things were getting better, blushing a little when she said it.

“I’m glad for you. And for the girls, too. To hear their mama laugh sometimes.”

Arranging his flowers, she pushed an iris in front of two pink tulips. “I think about him every morning, every night and ten times between, but I don’t always cry. What surprises me, though, is how sometimes I still forget. One of the girls will do something and I’ll think that I can’t wait till Andreas gets home from work to tell him.”

“Sometimes I still pick up the phone to call my father to tell him something-and he died almost twenty years ago.” He frowned. “I’m not sure that was the right thing to tell you. I’m sorry.”

“No, it is fine.” She positioned the vase in the middle of the table and then offered Josh wine or coffee. He said he’d love some coffee and she turned on the espresso machine.

“And you? You are better, too, no?” she asked.

“Yes. Much better, thank you.”

She turned away from her preparations and faced him, studying him for a few moments. Then she shook her head. “Not all better, though. It’s still in your eyes. I know what happened that day only from being told. I didn’t actually see it. I think in some ways you have it worse.”

Andreas Carlucci had been the security guard at the checkpoint right outside the Vatican, who had been caught in the blast that had almost claimed Josh’s life. The two of them were at the same hospital, in rooms next to each other. Tina had stayed at her husband’s side during the week he fought for his life, and every evening before she left to go home to her girls, she would stop by to see Josh. Swimming in and out of his drug-induced haze he would look up and see her, an angel standing by his bed, her long black hair framing her face, head bowed, eyes closed, whispering a prayer for his recovery.

Josh was released the day before Andreas’s funeral, and although he was still dizzy and in constant pain, he’d gone to pay his respects. It was the first time, but not the last, that he’d wondered whether, with two children and a wife, it might have been better if Andreas Carlucci had been the one to make it.

The same thought occurred to him now, watching her as she poured the coffee.

“It was nice of you to come and visit,” she said as she handed him a cup. “Are you in Rome for work?”

He nodded. “My first time back.”

“How was it? Did you have any-” She broke off, not sure of the words in English. “Backflashes?”

“Flashbacks?” He smiled but avoided the question. “Do you and the girls need anything?”

She shook her head. “We have his pension, plus I have gone back to work part-time. My parents help me out with the girls, who like having them around.”

“They look wonderful. I was thinking, before I leave, would you like me to take pictures of them? Of all three of you?”

Josh photographed the two girls and their mother in their garden with the afternoon sunshine shining down on them. At first the children were shy, but after he gave them their stuffed animals they relaxed and started having fun, laughing and posing and losing all inhibitions.

“Do you have pictures of our father from before the accident?” Dianna asked him suddenly.

Josh hadn’t thought she knew who he was.

“I do, yes. I have several.”

“Can we have them, please?”

“Of course. I should have thought of it before now,” Josh said, including Tina in his response. “I’ll send them as soon as I get home.”

And then Dianna picked up her doll and resumed playing with her sister.

All the shots Josh had taken in the seconds before the bomb exploded featured Andreas arguing with the woman who turned out to be a suicide bomber, insisting she let him inspect the baby carriage. No one in the family would get much joy from seeing how aggravating his last conscious moments had been.

“One minute they’re playing, the next inconsolable and then back to playing. Kids bounce back so fast,” Josh said to Tina as she walked him out to the waiting car.

“I think it’s because they aren’t afraid of grief the way we are…” Her eyes filled with tears.

“I’m sorry. Maybe my coming here wasn’t a good idea after all.”

“No. It was a very good idea. And a very kind one. I am glad to see you. So what if I cry? I always knew that Andreas’s job was dangerous. I was afraid that if he died, I would die, too. Now that I’ve found out I can live without him, I am not scared of so much.”

Josh didn’t know what to say. But Tina did. She took both his hands in hers, bowed her head, closed her eyes and intoned the words that had sounded like music to Josh when he had first heard them in his hospital room as he swam in and out of the pain medication, and sounded like music to him still.