Gabriel's Promise (Gabriel's Inferno 4)

“I had another email from Graham.” Julia sipped the ice coffee she’d just purchased. “I’d told him I couldn’t commit to Edinburgh until my supervisor signed off on the courses. He offered to speak to Cecilia directly.”

“Let him. Maybe he can talk some sense into her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I told him this morning that I’d speak to her when I saw the list of courses. But I also said I was interested in the teaching assistantship.”

“Good. It will be a great experience. I wonder if we could arrange to have you teach an undergraduate class over at Boston University.” The wheels were already turning in Gabriel’s mind.

Julia stopped. “You’d do that? You’d suggest that to your chair?”

“Why not? They hire adjuncts. I can’t guarantee the chair will hire you, but we should ask.”

“I’d like that.” Julia resumed walking.

“We should look into it the fall after we come back from Scotland.”

Julia nodded.

“Julianne.” Gabriel lowered his voice. “I’ve spoken with both Nicholas Cassirer and your uncle Jack in the past couple of days. Neither of them has been able to uncover any information about the intruder.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means the man is a ghost. Jack has been working things from this side of the Atlantic, while Nicholas has been speaking to his contacts in Europe. Nothing has emerged.”

Julia drank more coffee. “I suppose if the man is a professional, he’d try to keep a low profile. If he’s good at what he does, he won’t get caught, which means he wouldn’t have a record.”

“That was Nicholas’s assessment as well.”

“Gabriel, I hope this doesn’t mean you’re planning on keeping us in Miami indefinitely.”

“No.” Gabriel stopped the stroller and moved to the side. He caught the toy bunny that was dangling from its leash and placed it on the tray in front of Clare. She grabbed it and hugged it. “Rebecca says she wants to go back to the house, but I asked her to wait for us.”

“And what did she say?” Julia felt into step with Gabriel as he continued pushing the stroller.

“She relented. I think she misses us, but since we aren’t there, she’s content to have a longer stay with her son. Although it sounds like he isn’t home much, because he’s working.”

“She’s probably spoiling him with her cooking.”

“No doubt.” Gabriel helped himself to his own (hot) coffee, which was resting in the stroller’s (pretentious) cup holder. “How are you doing with Wodehouse’s reading list, now that Rachel has sent you your books?”

“It’s coming. I think if I work on it every day, I’ll make progress. It’s when I skip a day that I run into problems, because I forget where I am and have to reread passages. How about you?”

“It’s coming along.” Gabriel’s features brightened, as they always did when he had the opportunity to talk about Dante. “What do you think of the river of Lethe?”

“Um, I don’t know. I think it’s the river of forgetfulness in Purgatory, right?’

“Correct. There’s a debate in the literature as to how much forgetfulness it bestows on a human being. Some commentators argue it’s a river of oblivion.”

“I don’t think that’s right. The souls in Paradise have memory. So whatever the role of the river, it can’t be complete forgetfulness.”

“Exactly,” Gabriel agreed excitedly. “This is one of the things Rachel has been struggling with. She picked up this notion that the blessed in Heaven are entirely removed from those of us still on earth—as if they’d forgotten about us or can’t be bothered about us.”

“Paradise has to be better than that. However, there is that strange passage in The Divine Comedy where Dante can’t remember what Beatrice is talking about and she says it’s because he drank from Lethe.”

“There’s the conundrum. That’s part of what I’m trying to work out for my lectures. Beatrice says the waters will affect his sad memories.”

“And the three virtues say he’s faithful to her after he’s drunk from the river. I think that’s strange—that he needs to drink of forgetfulness in order to be faithful.”

Gabriel wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not sure that’s what’s happening. In any case, he hasn’t lost all his memories. He asks for Beatrice in the next canto. And in the canto after that, she exhorts him to leave behind fear and shame.”