Just when I had begun to worry that Teo might never show up, I heard a car chugging up the hill. It was his Bianchina, and I’d never been so glad to see it. I jumped to my feet and waved, but he didn’t see me, so I stood by and watched as he parked the car. He got out, and I moved toward him. By the time he noticed me, I was maybe a half-dozen feet away.
“Hey,” I said. I guess I expected him to say something, but he didn’t. He just stood there, taking me in. Like he was seeing a ghost.
“I’m really sorry for stringing you along all summer,” I started. “And for missing out on the opportunity to meet your—”
“Stop,” he whispered, and for a moment, I worried he was going to send me away. Instead, he started to weep. “I saw your car, up by the pharmacy. I thought you were dead.”
“Oh, Teo…”
“I was talking to people who were telling me they’d seen this pregnant American woman pulled from a car, and I knew it had to be Laura. I was sure you were with her, and I just thought that was it.”
I told him how we had indeed been forced from the car but that somehow Afonso had been there and had made it possible for us to escape.
“Afonso?” Teo said with a slight laugh as he wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand.
“Francesca might think he’s an idiot, but I’m here to tell you he’s not all bad.”
We were both laughing then, and Teo knelt before me. I laid my hands on his shoulders, and he reached for me, wrapping his arms around my waist. We stayed like that for a long time.
When Teo returned to his feet, he told me Bruno had been able to confirm that the white powder on the seafloor was asbestos. Nothing you want in a marine habitat, but it beat the alternative. Teo had spent the last forty-eight hours trying to figure out exactly what had happened to the U.S.S.Senecaand how long it would be in La Maddalena. Early indications were that it would take months to make the sub seaworthy enough for the long surface voyage back to Charleston.
I asked Teo if he knew about the leak in the containment room. He didn’t, so I filled him in on what had happened to Bobby and Kenny and the other guys on the Nuclear Repair team.
“Are they going to be okay?” Teo asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“It just keeps getting worse.”
I agreed, and we talked at some length about the probability that the radioactive particles that had been let loose in the sub would at some point find their way into the sea.
“It sounds like the sub’s interior is definitely contaminated. And the gangway leading to the tender. And maybe even parts of the tender,” I said. “But that can all be mitigated, right?”
“Sure,” said Teo. “If you’ve got smart people working on it.”
Paul was plenty smart, but he was also meant to rotate out of here in a little over two weeks.
“The biggest concern is always the reactor,” Teo said, and I told him that Bobby had insisted it was intact.
“Do you believe him?”
I thought about it for a moment. “Yeah, I do.”
“So maybe we’re okay?”
“This time,” I said. “But what about next time?”
“You sound like a real Italian,” he said with a smile.
“Speaking of that…”
He looked at me, his eyes hopeful.
“Paul knows about us.”
“You told him?”
“I did,” I said. “But as it turns out, he’s known for a while.”
