Italy's Most Scandalous Virgin - Carol Marinelli Page 0,54

told him. ‘How can I be a mother when I’m like this?’

‘You’ll be the best mother in the world,’ he told her.

Which only made her cry.

‘Mia, I’m so sorry.’

‘I’m terrified of ghosts...’

‘There are no ghosts,’ Dante said.

‘But there are.’

‘There are no ghosts,’ he insisted, and even tried a joke to haul her out of her fear. ‘It’s just the skeletons in my family closet that are rattling.’ But that only made her cry all the more. But her tears didn’t daunt Dante; in fact, there was an odd relief to meet the real Mia after all this time. ‘There’s no such thing as ghosts.’

‘My mother spoke to me, though.’

To hear this very private woman admit to something so bizarre deserved more than cold common sense and a quick dismissal.

‘Come,’ he said, and helped her to stand, not knowing quite what to do with her when she was so upset. He did what he could and helped Mia over to the bed. ‘Have some water.’

‘You don’t believe me.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ Dante said, as he helped her into bed. ‘I’m not getting in,’ he said, and lay on top of the bed and pulled her into him. ‘I know about the accident and your brother,’ Dante admitted. ‘I just found out and I am so very sorry. Now tell me about your mother. Is she talking to you now?’

‘I’m not hearing voices, Dante.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘So tell me.’

‘I don’t know how.’

‘Just say what happened, whatever way you can.’

It all came out then, in a back-to-front way—being trapped with her parents and her injured brother—and Dante listened, aghast at what she had been through. He held her and could feel the frantic hammering of her heart, close to the beat of his own.

‘I told my father not to drive. I mean, what was he thinking, driving in a city on the other side of the road?’

‘People do it all the time,’ Dante said.

‘And why the hell didn’t Michael get travel insurance? How could he be so damned selfish and reckless?’

‘It was a mistake,’ Dante said, ‘with appalling consequences. Perhaps go easy on him. I am sure he is beating himself up enough without—’

‘I could never say all this to him.’ Mia almost sat up in an effort to explain, but Dante pulled her back down. ‘I’m only saying it to you!’

‘Keep going, then,’ Dante said. Finally he understood her better; understood that the anger she’d felt had had nowhere to go, for her parents were dead and her brother needed her support, despite her own devastation at the consequences of his one simple mistake.

‘When I came to, I knew straight away that things were bad. I thought I was the only person to have made it, but then I heard my mother speak. She said to hold on, that the ambulance would be on its way, that help would arrive and that she loved me. I heard her, Dante.’

‘Okay.’

‘But when the report came back it said that she’d been killed instantly. Yet I heard her speaking to me.’

‘Okay,’ Dante said, and he thought for a long moment. ‘What if it wasn’t as instant as they said in the report? I mean, I appreciate science and everything, but they weren’t actually there.’

He made her smile just a little. With his arms around her, and his arrogant authority, Dante made her smile about a subject she had never thought she would smile about.

And though he believed his own theory he gave it more thought. ‘What if she used her dying breaths to speak to you?’

‘Perhaps.’ Mia had thought of that, but she liked hearing it from him.

‘Or what if you were semi-conscious and imagined what you most needed to hear?’

‘I don’t think so.’ She shook her head and then sighed as she conceded, ‘But...it’s possible.’

‘Or,’ Dante said—and he put logic aside for Mia—‘what if there is something that we cannot explain, and she somehow managed to be with you for a little while, even if she was gone?’

She looked up. ‘Like her spirit?’

‘I guess.’ Dante looked down and smiled. ‘And, even if—and I am suspending my beliefs here—but even if there are ghosts, surely she wouldn’t want to hurt you?’

‘No.’

She felt calmer for finally sharing with someone the hell of what had happened.

With him.

‘Did my father know all this?’ Dante asked.

‘Some,’ Mia said. ‘Most of it, though not the ghost part, but he knew about Michael’s injuries and the bills for treatment and how we lost everything getting him home.’

No wonder he had been