“In the absence of the life you want, what will you do with the life you have?”

“Do you still have the revolver you were going to shoot me with?” asked the old man on the telephone.“Yes, I have it here.”“How much ammunition?”“No idea. How do I find out?”He explained. In the moonlight, she felt the bulges of the cartridges in the cylinder. “Six,” she said.“And you don’t know how to use it?”“No.”“But you are American.”“Ha-ha.”“If you do as I say, and go about it cleverly, I hope you won’t need it. Unless Cesare Carnevare crosses your path, in which case please be kind enough to shoot him.”“How about the concordat?”He laughed. “Shoot him when no one’s looking.”

“She sighed. “Go on, say it. I shouldn’t have come.”“You shouldn’t have come.” He looked sideways at her and gave her a fleeting grin. “But I’m glad you did.”

“She struggled to find words, and then all the anger she had been damming up for the last few minutes broke out. It made no difference that none of what had happened was his fault. Nor did the fact that he’d saved her, or what he had sacrificed to do it. He was a Carnevare. He was one of them. And he was preventing her from going to her sister’s aid when Zoe needed her.“The girl that Cesare killed … ,” she snapped, “her name was Lilia. She … she loved my sister. Do you understand that? Zoe has just lost the person who probably meant more to her than anything else. And Lilia sacrificed herself for me. How can you think that—”“I’d have done the same thing,” he interrupted her calmly. “I’d have died for you up on that mountain.”That took her breath away. For a moment it deprived her not only of her self-control, but of the ability to utter another syllable.After endless seconds, she stammered, “That—that’s nonsense.”“It’s the truth.” He turned his head and looked at her. “I’m in love with you, Rosa.”She hesitated, fighting for composure.“Oh, hell,” she whispered.He smiled sadly.Then neither of them said anything, until finally she took his cell phone and called Zoe.”

“It would have been only fair to tell him so. To explain, right now, that she was the bloody Titanic whose wake would carry him under, if he didn’t jump into the lifeboat and head for the open sea.Instead, he leaned over to kiss her.She waited. Hesitated. Then withdrew her head before their lips could touch. For a split second he looked offended, but then he smiled, blinked at the sun, and said, “Well, when it gets to that point, I want to be there.”“When what gets to what point?”“When you’re not looking at everyone else as if they’d just declared war on you. And when you realize”—he pointed across the ravine—“that things may look like the end of the world but the world still goes on, over there on the other side. Maybe just one really large step would cross it.”

“When you write, you are telling a story...to yourself. When you revise, you are telling a story to yourself...over and over again.”

“Most are on the search for their center their entire life long, for the axis of their world, but only the fewest are aware of it.”