But Simon’s stare drifts toward the window.
“More than five minutes?” I ask, sensing what my brother really wants to know.
“Much more.”
The gendarme, then, wasn’t being honest with us. From the door of this apartment, the border is only a one-minute jog. No one will be caught at the gates tonight.
The officer folds up his notebook and stands. “There’s a car waiting for you downstairs, Sister. You shouldn’t walk home in the dark.”
“Thank you,” Helena says, “but I’ll stay the night here. For the little one’s sake.”
The cop opens the door a mite wider. “Your prioress is expecting you. A driver is waiting in the hall, ready to walk you downstairs.”
Sister Helena is a willful old nun, but she won’t let Peter see her argue with the police. She gives him a good-night kiss, and as she cups his cheek, her mottled hand trembles.
“I’ll call you later,” I tell her. “I have some more questions.”
She nods but says no more. Peter nestles deeper into my arms as she leaves. His fingers are balled up, clutching the hem of the soccer jersey he wears everywhere. Its red bib is smeared with half-dried tears. As I cradle him, I spot the trunk pushed against the closet door. Sister Helena would’ve left the closet first, to phone the gendarmes. She would’ve had Peter stay behind for his safety. So my son has been hunkering alone in a dark closet.
Feeling him pant on my neck, I realize it’s half an hour past his bedtime. I can sense his exhaustion in the sheer weight of his body. “Do you want something to drink?” I whisper.
We make our way out to the kitchen, and he points to the shattered plate on the kitchen tile. “I did that,” he says. “On accident.”
I raise the overturned chair. Helena must have snatched him right out of his seat, all forty pounds of him. From a shelf I take down the Orange Fanta, a drink reserved for special occasions. It’s been Peter’s favorite ever since he saw Cardinal Ratzinger drinking it at the Cantina Tirolese in town. As he buries himself in the plastic cup, I stare over his shoulder at the mess in the hall. It extends toward my bedroom. For some reason, it passes over Peter’s. This seems to confirm Helena’s recollection of events.
“It’s storming outside,” Peter says, surfacing from the orange lagoon.
I nod absently. Maybe he’s thinking about the man out there, the intruder, who hasn’t been caught. I watch the gendarme return from a tour of my bedroom. As he passes Peter’s door, Simon emerges. The gendarme asks something, but my brother answers, “No. My nephew’s been through enough for one night.”
“Babbo?” Peter says.
I turn. He’s waiting expectantly.
“Yes?”
“I said, did the car break down in the rain?”
It takes me a second to understand. He’s wondering why Simon and I were late coming home. Why he and Sister Helena were all by themselves when the man came.
“We . . . had a flat tire.”
The Fiat breaks down often. Peter has become an authority on leaking oil and faulty alternators. I worry sometimes that he’s becoming an encyclopedia of misfortunes.
“Okay,” he says, watching his uncle shut the door after the police.
Now the apartment is ours again. When Simon sits down beside his nephew, his size reassures Peter, who moves to the edge of his chair like a butterfly sunning itself on a branch.