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“They said Nonna Rosa would be all right too.”

My mother’s sister. Sarah was four. I didn’t realize she even remembered her.

“You’re right. People do say that.” I take Pip’s small wing between two fingers. “Nonna had a real problem with her heart. The doctor says it’s minor, but that doesn’t make me feel better until she’s on her feet again. We’re going to watch it carefully for a long time, and she’ll come home with a bunch of new meds that she’ll complain about. But she’ll be alive to complain about them.”

Sarah’s eyes stay on the doors. “Okay.”

“Nick caught it fast, and fast is what matters most. We’ll all take turns watching out for her too. You’re with her a lot, so if she ever looks pale or doesn’t sound right, you grab the nearest adult and make them help. Veda would be best, obviously, but whoever can get there fastest. That’s how you can help.”

She frowns. “I’m Nonna’s babysitter?”

I laugh and lasso my arm around her neck so I can kiss the top of her head. “For now, we all are. But you can’t tell her that. She’d be mad.”

“Yeah. She’d hate that.”

“Right now, tonight, she’s stable and resting and cranky about the food. Which means she’s going to be just fine.”

The ghost of a smile. “She hates hospital food. She always has, even when it was me in the bed.”

I’m pretty sure she hated it worse when Sarah was in the bed. “She’s already asked for salt, according to the doctor, who ordered her a no-salt diet. Three times, and threatened a nurse with excommunication over the broth.”

“That’s good?”

“She’s got some fight left in her. That’s where you get it from. That’s why you’re so strong.”

Veda finds us there, together with Pip. She threw on fresh clothes since I pretty much destroyed her other ones, but she didn’t have time to spend on her hair, and now it’s coming loose. Just a long sweater and leggings, and even with messed-up hair, she looks like a goddess come to help a lowly mortal. “Go see your mother. She’s asking for you. I’ve got this one.”

Behind the doors, my mother is smaller in the bed than she is in the world. Wires twist from her to machines. They report her heart in green light, some flashing. But her eyes are open and sharp, and when she sees me they narrow, judgmentally. The look could peel paint, but it loosens another finger from the fist that’s been clenched behind my ribs.

“You look terrible,” she informs me in Italian.

“You had a heart attack, Ma. I get to look terrible.”

“A small one. The doctor said minor.” She waves a hand tethered to a line. “I’ve survived your father, wars, your adolescence, and your love life. A minor heart attack is nothing.”

Then her face changes, and she looks at the door. “Nick saved my life.”

“I know, Ma. The doctor told me the same.”

“No. I was on the ground by the tomato vendor. Lupo, I could not breathe or call out. And he was there for me.”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t⁠—”

“I don’t mean it that way. You cannot stay with me every day, all day. I would kill you after a week.”

I snort at that. “Gee, thanks, Ma.”

My mother’s eyes are wet and furious about it. “You will give him a raise. You understand me?”

“Already on the agenda.”

“And you can blame the expense on Veda.”

She zigged where I thought she would zag. “How’s that?”

“He told me, in the ambulance. Veda taught him some things to look out for with me. She showed him CPR, what signs to watch out for, I don’t know what else. She trained him for me.”

“I had no idea.”