Next up, thanks to Massimo and his information from Blackwood’s house, drip-fed to the police to direct the investigation, was the ruin formerly known as Ospedale di Santa Maria.
A river ran through the middle of Santa Maria’s grounds. It was pretty, or it would be, if it weren’t for the charred skeleton of the hospital.
Massimo stopped on the bank, transferring the snowdrops between his hands.
“She’s here . . . all around me.”
I pulled a snowdrop from the bunch and held it in the air.
“In that case, you don’t need to wait to find her bones. We can honor her here. For Sara.”
I dropped the flower into the rushing river and watched it get carried away downstream.
Massimo smiled at me and then followed my example, pulling one snowdrop, and then another, and letting them fall into the water.
His last goodbye. Closure, finally.
Later, we watched as the excavation started up.
“What do you think will happen to this place once everything is over with?” I wondered.
Massimo shrugged. “I don’t know. Salt the earth and move on. It’s a beautiful spot. It’s a shame that the stain of such terrible things will remain here,” he muttered.
“Hmm, it is a shame. I bet you could buy this land for a steal, once everything is said and done and all the investigations are concluded.”
“And do what with it?” Massimo asked.
I thought about it. “Well, the weather is good here, dry and warm. It’s close to the city. What about a cat rescue?” I suggested.
Massimo blinked at me. “A cat rescue?”
“Mm-hmm, for all the little strays.”
“Finding Gravy and bringing him back to our home has really given you a false sense of confidence about how easy it is to look after animals,” Massimo teased.
“Ha, not false confidence... just certainty that we could hire the right people to run it.”
Massimo chuckled and shook his head. “I never know what the fuck you’re going to say next.”
I tossed my hair and grinned at him. “Don’t you just love that about me?”
He was still smiling, and now he simply nodded. “Yes. That, and everything else.”
Massimo disappeared as soonas we got back to the hotel, and I had a call from Giada.
“How was it?” she asked immediately. Despite her being half the world away, we talked every day. Even though Sergei had fallen, there were more locations with similar kinds of establishments to Hallow Hall that we didn’t know about yet.
None of us would rest until we found them all.
“Grim, but there’s hope there. Someday, it’ll not be such a dark, depressing place.”
“Good, though speaking of dark depressing places... I’ve got something for you.”
She rattled off the address of a place in Palermo. I immediately thought of Tatiana’s mother. Tatiana was right now happily in Turin, attending real school for the first time in her life, living in the townhouse with us and Paolo, and a kindly old nanny whom Massimo had brought in, a woman who seemed to think it was her job to spoil Tatiana rotten. I loved her already.
“You want me to forward the information to the cops?”
“Hmm, not yet, I think.”