Nine months. Nine months of carrying his child, and Dante Moretti had not attended a single prenatal appointment. Not one. There was always a sit-down he couldn't miss, a shipment that needed overseeing, a call from the Don that pulled him out the door before I could finish asking. I had learned to stop asking. A Moretti wife learns that quickly, or she learns it slowly and painfully. Either way, she learns.
But here he was.
Here he was, running around Riverside General like a man possessed. Registering at the front desk. Picking up medication from the pharmacy window. Holding another woman's elbow as she stepped down from the examination hallway, guiding her with the kind of care I hadn't felt from his hands in years. Maybe ever.
The lobby was busy. Nurses in soft-soled shoes moved between corridors. A child cried somewhere down the hall. The overhead fluorescents hummed their flat, institutional hum, washing everything in a light that hid nothing. And Dante stood in the middle of it all, his hand on the small of Cara Valente's back, his body angled toward hers like a shield.
At that moment, I realized it wasn't that he was too busy. He had never been too busy.