Chapter Text
If it takes forever
I will wait for you
For a thousand summers
I will wait for you
Danny stepped out on the balcony of the luxury hotel in Rome where he had just arrived with his wife, Rachel, and their daughter, Grace, for a two-week vacation in Italy. In addition to this posh spot, they were also planning some side trips that would include other luxurious or, at the very least, historic, accommodations. The trip had been in the planning stages for months, part of Rachel’s plan to start exposing Grace to world travel as soon as she was truly old enough to enjoy and remember it. Danny wasn’t sure if eight years old was the right milestone for that, but Rachel was convinced that Grace needed to start collecting stamps on her passport, so here they were.
And, as Rachel pointed out, much of Danny’s heritage was Italian, so beginning with trips that related to Grace’s ancestors seemed logical to her. Danny hadn’t earned any points with his wife when he suggested the side trip to Milan, the fashion Mecca of Italy, had something to do with the choice. She had a three-day excursion planned to show Grace all the highlights of the Milan fashion scene. Danny was fairly sure none of his ancestors were fashion designers or runway models, so he wasn’t sure how that tied into the cultural significance of the trip.
The trip from the US to Italy had been frosty, to say the least. Rachel had very little to say and neither did he. They spent most of their time trying to sound cheerful for Grace’s sake. During one of their many epic arguments about a week before the trip, Rachel had blurted out that she wanted a divorce. So here they were on a family vacation of a lifetime as the family was on the verge of being torn in half. Danny already had his notice - Rachel wanted him out of the house pending the divorce. He hadn’t decided yet if he was going to fight that, if it was worth making Grace listen to them do battle every night or if he should just walk away. Or if there was anything left to fight for anymore.
He sighed as he stared out at what he knew was an awe-inspiring view of the city. Then Grace was beside him with her new smart phone with the state-of-the-art digital camera snapping a photo of the view to add to her already epic collection of photos of everything since they’d left Jersey.
“It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed, lining up another shot. “Where are we going first?” she asked, excited.
“We’re taking a nap, remember?” Rachel reminded her, joining them on the balcony. “Then dinner, and then tomorrow, we start out fresh.”
“Can’t we go somewhere now?” Grace wheedled, taking another picture of the view.
“Why don’t we go out for a short walk and let Mommy get settled?” Danny suggested.
“Yay!” Grace cheered, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward the interior of the suite so they could leave.
“Thank you for backing me up as usual, Daniel,” Rachel said crisply, shooting him a look and going back to her unpacking. “I’ll just get us all ‘settled’ while you two go exploring,” she added.
“Bye, Mommy!” Grace replied happily, the sarcasm either having gone over her head or not impressing her enough to linger when she had a chance to go out. Before the big blow up, before he was given his walking papers, it might have worried Danny. Now, what did he have to lose? He was a dead man walking anyway as far as their marriage was concerned, so staying on Rachel’s good side had become an unattainable goal. If he were being honest with himself, it had been for some time.
“We won’t be long,” he said to Rachel as they left the suite. “Your mom’s right, jet lag will knock you right out. We’ll stretch our legs a bit and then get some rest, okay?”
“Okay, Danno,” she agreed, grinning.
Within walking distance of the hotel was a big piazza with street performers and a market, and there was a gorgeous, gigantic fountain nearby that kept Grace snapping photos for quite a while. She even got a couple amused Italians to stop and take pictures of her with Danny in front of it. It crossed Danny’s mind what a wonderful trip this could be, if his marriage wasn’t disintegrating, and if he didn’t know that there was no way he could ever afford to take Grace on a trip like this himself. Rachel’s parents were footing the bill for this one, over his objections, since the only thing worse than them looking down their Patrician noses at him was taking handouts from them.
They were eating Italian ice and strolling down the sidewalk, checking out the area, when Danny realized the shadows of dusk were starting to fall.
“Your mother’s gonna kill me,” he muttered under his breath. “Come on, monkey, we need to get back to the hotel.”
“I thought we came here to sight-see. Why would she be mad?” Grace asked, frowning.
“She won’t be mad at you, kiddo. I stuck her with all the unpacking.”
“I had fun,” she said, grinning. That made Danny smile.
“Me, too,” he agreed. “Just, uh, don’t mention the Italian ice before dinner.”
“I won’t,” she agreed, giggling.
********
Danny got to know the view from the balcony very well. He spent most of his time sitting there, staring out at it, avoiding spending time with Rachel once Grace was in bed. They’d had a strained dinner in the hotel dining room because Rachel was, as he predicted, furious with him for the length of time he’d taken on that “short” walk before dinner. Plus, sharing a bed with a woman who hated your guts and didn’t even want you to live in the same house anymore wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. He hated himself for feeling a little spark of hope when she joined him on the balcony with a sweater over her flowing white negligee. She didn’t seem ready for battle, but he should have known better than to think she was weakening in her resolve or changing her mind. Still, the part of his heart he couldn’t control fluttered a little at the possibility. Until she opened her mouth.
“I hope you’re not planning another little stunt like that, going off with Grace on your own and being the ‘fun’ parent,” she said, making little quote marks in the air.
“It’s a vacation, Rachel. She wanted to go out exploring a little. That’s why we brought her here, isn’t it?”
“Would it kill you to back me up just one time?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would ruin the trip if I took a walk with my daughter.”
“Is this how it’s going to be for the entire two weeks?”
“I hope not,” Danny muttered under his breath.
“What is that supposed to mean? I’m the bad guy because I set some rules, or because I don’t appreciate you acting like another child I can’t control?”
“Fine. I won’t take Grace anywhere without your written permission. How’s that?”
“Get used to it. Soon enough, you’re going to need my permission, and visitation without permission is called parental kidnapping.”
Danny stared at her angry profile in the moonlight.
“When did you start hating me, Rachel?”
“I don’t hate you. Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just obvious that we can’t live together in any sort of harmony and I want more for myself, and for Grace, than living in that constant stress.”
“Like Stan Edwards?” Danny asked. There was nothing good about the whole awful situation, but he would have paid good money to borrow Grace’s camera to catch the expression Rachel’s face when he brought up the name of “the other man.” “Didn’t think I knew about him, did you? I’m a cop, Rachel, and a damn good one. I know you’ve been seeing someone else for a few months now.”
“I haven’t been ‘seeing’ Stan. I know him. There’s a big difference.”
“Whatever.”
“You’re accusing me of being unfaithful?”
“I don’t know for sure if you’ve slept with him yet, but I know you have my replacement lined up.”
“Were you going to say anything about it?”
“I was hoping I was wrong, but when you asked for a divorce, it was kind of a dead giveaway.”
“Things haven’t been good between us for a long time, Danny.”
“We’ve always fought a lot, but we have Grace, and I thought we loved each other.”
“Sometimes that’s not enough,” she said.
“Yeah, I suppose not. I’ve done a background check on Stan. Love plus ten million bucks is pretty hard to beat with just love.”
“And you wonder why I want a divorce,” she snapped, angry, standing.
“Not once I got Stan’s financials back, I didn’t wonder about it.” Danny really just wanted the satisfaction of hurting her as much as she’d hurt him. He didn’t care about making the point, and he wasn’t sure all their problems were about money.
“When you come back inside, please sleep on the couch.”
“Grace won’t find that too suspicious.”
“It’s not like you haven’t slept there before,” she retorted, storming back into the room.
********
Their first full day in Rome lived up to everything Danny had heard about visiting the city. You will see a lot of amazing architecture, history, religious relics, and you’ll walk your legs off. Some of it seemed to bore Grace, which was understandable for an eight-year-old, but other things fascinated her, like the interiors of the beautiful old churches, and viewing the “incorrupt” corpse of a real saint, on display in one of the churches.
Danny found dead people in artificial states to be creepy anyway, but this took it to a new level. It was bad enough that people get painted up and dressed pretty and put on display for a funeral, but to lie in state, to be viewed, when you’ve been dead several hundred years?
“Danno, you’ve seen dead people before. Is that real?” Grace asked, just loud enough to mortify Rachel and to carry to the ears of a few nearby tourists who were also viewing the body.
“Most bodies would be dust after that many years, Monkey,” he said quietly, ignoring Rachel’s eye roll and brief covering of her face with one hand. “The Church believes that in some cases, if a body doesn’t decompose, it’s supporting evidence that the person was holy and should be a saint.”
“So God keeps them like that?”
“That’s what the Church believes. Some bodies are preserved because of the conditions they’re kept in - if the temperature, humidity level, soil composition, whatever, is just right, sometimes bodies stay in better shape.”
“Do you really think your eight-year-old needs a detailed explanation of corpse decomposition?” Rachel asked, whispering the question angrily in Danny’s ear.
“Since she asked about it, yeah, I do,” he replied out loud, not caring if Grace or anyone else heard him. “What do you want me to say? Magic fairies put spells on them?”
“I think it’s time we moved on to something a bit less morose and more age appropriate,” she said, hustling Grace away from the somewhat morbid sight. Before Danny could follow them, a tiny, elderly lady with a deeply lined face dressed in black robes approached him. At first he thought she was a nun, but the garment that covered her head and body didn't exactly look like a nun's habit.
“You must go to the Chiese di Santo Stefano,” she said in a heavily accented voice. “It is in a remote village in the hills. You will have to go there on a...a bicicletta,” she said, obviously having given up on the English word, bicycle.
“Why would I do that?” Danny asked, smiling. She was very old and frail, and part of him just wanted to snap a picture of her since she was a more interesting Italian relic than the mummy in the box they’d been viewing. She gripped his arm with surprising strength.
“He waits for you there,” she said, pinning him with a frightening stare from her beady little dark eyes. Something in that gaze unsettled him...it was familiar, there was something about those eyes that spoke to him without words. “Go to the Church of Santo Stefano,” she repeated, and then she turned and shuffled away into a crowd of tourists milling around the church.
“Wait!” he called out to her and began to follow her. Instead, he ran head on into Rachel who had Grace by the hand.
“There you are. Let’s go. We’re starved and it’s past time for lunch,” she said.
“I wanted to talk to that old woman, the one in the black robes. Did you see her? She was heading right toward here,” he said, gesturing to the area around them.
“We’re in an Italian church, Danny. She was probably just an elderly nun. Why do you need to talk to her?”
He stared at Rachel a moment, then at Grace’s inquisitive expression, and sighed.
“I don’t, I guess. She just seemed like an interesting old lady who knew a lot of local history.” He could still feel the grip of her bony little hand on his arm. A chill ran down his spine.
“Well, let’s go get something to eat and rest a while. Then it’s off to the Coliseum,” she said cheerfully, looking at Grace, who faked a smile but looked bored at the thought.
As they left the church, Danny kept looking around at the crowd, trying to catch a glimpse of the tiny elderly woman in the black veil, but he didn’t see her again.
********
The rest of the day was uneventful, even though Danny found himself scanning every crowd for the old woman in the black robes. Why, he had no idea. His cop’s brain told him it was illogical to expect to see her pop up at every tourist attraction, especially given her advanced age. It was unlikely she was going to take a walking tour of the city. Plus, she was probably just a senile old lady who was confused and mistook him for someone else, or was talking about something completely detached from reality.
They ate an elegant dinner in an upscale restaurant a short distance from their hotel. The food was amazing and plentiful, accompanied by outstanding wine and an authentic, historic atmosphere. All Danny could think of were the changes in his life that were on the other side of this trip. The worst of those was the thought of not seeing Grace every day, not being a part of her life the way a live-in parent was. His schedule meant he sometimes missed dinner or didn't get home until after Grace was asleep, but one way or another, he usually saw her at least for a little while, sometime during a 24-hour period.
"Danno," Grace said, sounding as if she was frustrated. He must have missed his cue to reply to something.
"Dessert?" Rachel asked, annoyed. A waiter was standing by the table, a tray of delicacies for them to look over. Danny chose cannoli, which made Grace grin because that's what she'd chosen, too. Rachel had selected tiramisu.
“Did you know that old lady at the church today?” Grace asked. Danny was a bit startled by that question, but almost relieved that someone else had seen her. He had begun to think he was hallucinating the way she seemed to vanish into the crowd. Of course, Rachel typically reacted to most things as if she thought he was nuts, so her attitude about the old woman shouldn’t have surprised him.
“No, I didn’t. She was just telling me about some other interesting places to visit while we’re here.”
“Like where?” Grace asked.
“She was telling me about a church that was in such a remote location, you could only reach it by bicycle,” he said. Grace’s eyes widened.
“Really? People live out there with no cars or anything?”
“I guess they do,” he replied, smiling. “When did you see her?”
“Right after she talked to you. She was kind of scary looking, like the old witch in Snow White.”
“Really, Grace, that’s very rude,” Rachel corrected. “You shouldn’t make fun of people for how they look.”
“I don’t think she meant it that way, Rachel. She was a little scary-looking. You didn’t see her. She looked like she was about 200 years old.”
“And she kept staring at me. It was weird,” Grace said. “I really wasn’t making fun of her, Mommy. It’s just how she looked.”
“Anytime somebody’s staring at you and it makes you nervous, you get your mom or me, okay, Monkey? Even if it’s just an old lady.”
“She kind of disappeared, so it didn’t matter.”
“Kind of disappeared?” Rachel asked. “What are you talking about? Honestly, you two and your disappearing old ladies.”
“There were a lot of people around, and somebody walked in front of her and then she was gone. But it was like she disappeared,” Grace said.
“I know. It was a big crowd, so I couldn’t keep track of her either.”
“Why would you want to?” Rachel asked, frowning.
“I felt like I should recognize her, but I’m not sure why,” he said honestly, then regretted it.
“I seriously doubt she’s anyone you met before.”
“No, I’m sure you’re right, dear. As always,” Danny said, smiling, but he knew he couldn’t keep the sneer out of his expression or his voice. Fortunately, as the storm clouds formed in Rachel’s expression, the waiter returned with dessert. Saved by the tiramisu, Danny thought to himself.
********
Maybe it was because he was dreading a longer, more significant goodbye that made him barely able to hold back tears seeing Grace off on her three-day fashion orgy with Rachel in Milan. It was too much a foreshadowing of what the future held: Rachel leaving and taking Grace with her. Well, more accurately, Danny being cast out of the family home with the clothes on his back and little else. But no matter who went where, the separation was inevitable, and it was killing him.
With Rachel and Grace on their way, Danny returned to the hotel, and decided to stop at the front desk and ask a few questions about the church the old lady had told him about. The weather was beautiful and predicted to stay that way a few days, and provided it wasn’t an extreme endurance-level bicycle ride, some time outdoors and exploring a remote village might actually be an interesting side trip. Fortunately, the young man at the front desk spoke English. He was in his twenties, handsome, with dark hair and large, compelling dark eyes. Danny could appreciate a good looking man, even lust after one a bit, but he’d put that part of himself aside. He enjoyed women, and dating women was just a whole lot less complicated.
Well, women were arguably more complicated than men, but dating them was a hell of a lot easier to explain to your friends and family. It wasn’t that Danny’s family was particularly hateful or bigoted, but he grew up around cops and firefighters, in a neighborhood where men were men and sissies were more likely to get beaten up on the playground. Since he was usually at a disadvantage for his size, further complicating his life by dating guys wasn’t something he wanted to take on. He did just fine defending himself - and even picking the occasional fight with someone significantly larger - but he wasn’t suicidal, either.
“I ran into someone...I’m sure she was a local,” Danny said. “She told me about the Church of Santo Stefano...said you could only get there by bicycle.”
“It’s a nice journey, actually, if you have the time.”
“Do you have a brochure or something?”
“They don’t have electricity out there, so they’re not big on producing tourist information, I’m afraid,” he replied, and Danny laughed at that.
“Seriously, no electricity?”
“That usually is enough to keep visitors away,” the man, whose name badge read “Donato”, chuckled.
“Is that what they want? To keep visitors away?”
“Here’s a little secret. There’s a small inn there that has a gas generator, so they do have lights and a few minimal conveniences for cooking. It’s very rustic, so if you’re wanting all the comforts of this place, it’s not gonna be for you,” he said.
“What’s the story on the church? Does it have some kind of amazing architecture or something?”
“It houses the ruins of the original shrine built around the remains of a local hero, I guess you’d call him. They refer to him as Santo Stefano, but he’s not recognized by the church as a saint. As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the church is named for the recognized Saint Stephen, or Santo Stefano, not the guy whose remains are there.”
“Kinda makes sense then...the old lady told me to go there while I was viewing the remains of one of the saints here, in one of the local churches.”
“I didn’t actually get in to see him, but I hear he’s pretty incredible.”
“You can view this guy?”
“Yeah, like I said, the main part of the church is built around the old shrine. They keep it locked most of the time and have security there.”
“Security? To protect a dead guy in a church you can only reach by bicycle?”
“There are a lot of sick people around. They’re very protective of his resting place. The village is actually called Santo Stefano.”
“They built this village around a dead guy?”
“He was a Roman soldier who protected a lot of Christians from Roman persecution.”
“So he was martyred?”
“Not exactly. His lover was, and he killed himself.”
“His lover?”
“Probably why the Catholic Church didn’t canonize him,” Donato said. “His male lover was a scholar and a teacher who took in children orphaned when their parents were killed or jailed because of their faith. Obviously kids weren’t documented back then like they are now, so often the Romans didn’t know they existed or if they did, what became of them. Something happened and he got caught, and he died to protect the children. Most of them escaped, I guess. Anyway, the legend is that Stefano was so inconsolable at the death of his lover that he went off to some remote cave in the woods and threw himself on his sword. Not exactly the kind of thing the Catholic Church goes for in a saint. He was buried there, and I guess they dug him up at some point and he had never decayed. I wanna try to get out there again sometime and see if I can actually get in to see him. He’s supposed to be the gold standard in preserved corpses. Even better than the best ones around here.”
“Yeah, sounds like a real tourist attraction,” Danny said with a smile and a roll of the eyes. Donato laughed. It was a nice laugh that revealed perfect, even white teeth surrounded by a nice five o’clock shadow. Shit, he’s hot, Danny thought, wondering if he could get away with a tryst with a hot desk clerk while Rachel was away. Might beat the hell out of riding a bike for miles to look at a dead guy. It wasn’t like he was gonna salvage his marriage at this point...
“You want directions?”
“To what?”
“Santo Stefano,” Donato replied, still smiling that smile.
“Oh, yeah. Plus where can I get a bike?”
“You’ll take a train into the mountains, and when you get as far as you can go, there’s a place that rents them.”
Danny was quiet as the other man wrote down the information, then grabbed a nearby sheet of paper to write down directions and draw a crude map of the route to Santo Stefano.
“No GPS out there either, huh?” Danny asked.
“The cell reception is slim to none,” Donato said, still drawing. “Another reason it’s not high on the list of tourist attractions. Gotta leave the Facebook behind.”
“Yeah, I’m beginning to wonder why I’m going there.” Danny smiled, but he was confused a little by all of it. Bicycling through rural Italy to some backwater village with no electricity and no cell reception would have been the last thing he’d have chosen to do while planning the trip from the comfort of a laptop in his living room several months ago.
“Okay, so this is the train you’ll want to take,” Donato explained, pointing to the name of the train and the route. “That’s the number for the station. I can make a reservation for you if you like.”
“That would be great. My Italian isn’t too good.”
“No problem. Once you get there, go to this little shop near the train station,” he said, pointing to the Italian name of the business. “Rent your bike there and then follow the map. The bike ride takes a few hours, so you might want to stay over at the bed and breakfast near the train station and start out in the morning, since you’ll be getting there late afternoon. Be sure you have cash, because they don’t take plastic out there.”
“Seriously?”
“The bike rental place does, but the B&B and anything in the actual village won’t.”
“Okay. Remind me why I’m doing this again.”
“You’re looking for the ultimate tourist experience. Avventura!” he said, emphasizing the word with an appropriate flourishing gesture of his hand. “And you feel like you have to see Stefano now, for yourself,” he said, his knowing smile going from hot to a bit unnerving. Danny felt a chill as he took the paper. “I’ll make that reservation for you, Mr. Williams. I’ll call your room with the confirmation information. Should I just charge it to the credit card from your reservation?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” Let Rachel and her parents pay to keep me entertained for a few days. They can afford it. “Grazie,” Danny added, and Donato smiled. Whatever odd thing had passed over his features seemed to be gone, and there were those perfect white teeth and that hotness again.
“You want to leave this afternoon, right?”
“Yeah, sure, if you can get me a ticket.”
“I’m sure it won’t be a problem,” he replied.
And it wasn’t. Donato came through with a train ticket for Danny to begin his avventura into the hills of rural Italy that very afternoon. He’d spent his free time picking up a few things he’d need for a bike trip and a visit to a remote village, including a backpack, a few basic emergency items, and some dried food. He wasn’t sure why he expected to need that, but he also wasn’t about to take chances on being stranded in a cave someplace without something to keep him going if he got lost. Dressed in a t-shirt, jeans, athletic shoes, and a light jacket, he boarded the train and settled in to enjoy the amazing scenery.
He dozed off for a while, dreaming odd, scattered images of Grace playing outdoors in the grass, but it wasn’t a place he’d ever been before, and she was dressed...oddly. Crude stone structures and rolling hills of green were all that made up the landscape, and he couldn’t shake the fear that made him want to run to his daughter and sweep her up, and carry her to safety. But from what, he wasn’t sure. He came to with a start, smiling uneasily at the woman in the seat next to him, an older lady who just smiled back and returned to reading her magazine.
Looking out the window, it seemed like the landscape looked a lot like the one in his dreams. He shrugged that off. Of course, it did. After all, he’d been looking out the window and thinking about Grace when he dozed off. It all made perfect sense.
Like traveling into the hills of Italy to view a corpse in a village with no electricity.
********
Danny stayed in the bed and breakfast in the same small town where the train station was located. Donato was right; he wouldn’t have enough time to ride to Santo Stefano by bike before nightfall, and with no electricity at his destination - or at least very little and only in scattered places - it was likely to be pitch dark for the final leg of the journey if he’d attempted it then.
After a challenging but gesture-filled conversation with an old woman who spoke no English at the “front desk” of the inn (a card table, two chairs, and a guest book), he’d wound up counting off some bills and she gave him a room key and a point toward the stairs. The four rooms upstairs shared a single bathroom, but it appeared only one other room was occupied, so Danny didn’t see that as too much of a problem. He did begin to wonder about his fellow tenant - who could actually be as gullible a tourist as he was to be making this journey into nowhere and paying someone he was sure had sworn at him in Italian for the privilege of sharing a bathroom with strangers.
He was pleasantly surprised by the room. The house itself looked, from the outside, as if it hadn’t been updated in the last few centuries, with its stone exterior and tile roof. The downstairs was pretty rustic, too, with bare wood floors, peeling paint on the walls, and a crabby old woman playing cards at a table handling the reservations. The room itself had a nice tile floor, a paint job that was probably at least completed in the current century, and antique furniture that included a double bed, dresser, mirror, and rocking chair. There were wood and glass doors that opened onto a small balcony, and the view was incredible. He was glad he’d brought his good camera, and not just relied on his phone. He took several shots of the landscape from there, and now knew how he’d occupy himself until dinner, which he thought the old woman said was at 7:00. Either that, or breakfast was at that time in the morning, he wasn’t entirely sure, but some meal was served at 7 one time or the other.
With his good camera in hand and his phone with the marginal cell signal in his pocket, he set off to take a short walk and take some photos. He wished Rachel would have found a trip like this interesting. The gorgeous landscape and rich historic value of the buildings was something it seemed like you should share with a traveling companion. Maybe share with your daughter, although he thought Grace might be a little young to really find this of much interest.
He stopped by the shop to inquire about renting a bike, and the older man there assured him there was no danger he’d run out between then and morning, but accepted Danny’s deposit anyway and told him he could pick up his bike early the next morning.
“I’m riding out to Santo Stefano,” he told the man as he handed him the money.
“They don’t get many visitors,” he said in broken, heavily accented English.
“Really? I would have thought the preserved body would be a big attraction. They seem to be interested in that in Rome. I find it all a little weird, looking at people who ought to be underground in a grave like they’re sideshow attractions.”
“But you are here,” the man said, giving him an amused look.
“Yeah, here I am,” Danny repeated, chuckling. “My wife and daughter are in Milan clothes shopping, so I was looking for a more authentic Italian experience.”
“You must be a wealthy man if she can shop in Milan.”
“Not quite. I’m a cop in Jersey, back in the US. He paused as the older man looked a bit confused. “Polizia...in the US.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Rich wife,” he added, and the other man laughed. “What do you know about Santo Stefano? Is it worth the ride?”
“I have been there as a child. My mother would occasionally go there to the shrine. Of course, you know that outside this region, he is not a saint, not recognized by the Church.”
“So I’ve heard. Because he had a male lover and committed suicide.”
“You can’t argue with the preservation of the body. Most of the incorrupt saints...they are preserved with wax or chemicals. Some who are still preserved when their graves are first disturbed, once they are exposed to the air, the light...no more. Santo Stefano...he does not change.” The old man leaned forward. “When I was a boy, I saw him weep,” he said, gesturing toward his eyes.
“You saw a dead guy crying?” Danny asked, raising his eyebrows.
“You may see it, too. The legend says he mourns the death of his lover every year, about this time,” he said.
“Well, if they need more tourists, they should hire you to do their publicity. I’m more interested, now,” he said, smiling. “Should be quite a show.”
“You are making fun,” the man said, pinning him with an accusatory look. “You would be wise not to do that when you visit Santo Stefano. People here have grown up with a deep love and sense of...of protecting him, because he protected Christians, centuries ago, from the Romans.”
It was on the tip of Danny’s tongue to make another smart remark about the whole situation, but something stopped him. Maybe it was the sincerity in the older man’s eyes. He hadn’t really meant to make fun of his religion.
“No offense. I was raised in a house full of Irish-Italian Catholics, okay?” he said, smiling holding up his hands. “It’s just all a little hard to believe.”
“Many things require faith, my friend. You must have some, and be open to the truths it will reveal.”
“Sure. I’ll visit the shrine with an open mind,” he said, nodding. “And respect. I’m not here to offend the locals.”
“Enjoy your trip. I hope you find what you are looking for,” he added.
“Yeah, thanks,” Danny replied, a little confused by the odd conversation.
********