Chapter 14: Old Hands

Nonna would not let anyone near the cream blanket until she had a needle in her hand.

"A little hole," she said. "Behind the star. Nobody checks the star."

The investigator who had found me in October sat at the end of her counter with a recorder the size of a button.

He was a quiet, gray man, and he watched my grandmother's hands with respect.

She pushed the recorder into the stuffing with her thumb, sewed the seam shut in four stitches and set the blanket back on the shelf above the bread.

"There," she said. "Now we bake."

Maxim was parked down the street with a second receiver and his hands in his lap.

I had made him promise he would stay in the car.

He had promised, and he had hated every syllable of it.

At ten I sent Margot the text we had written together.

I can't do this. He's so cold, and I'm so scared. Can you come? Please don't tell him.

She answered in under a minute.

I'm already on the road, sweetheart.

She was in the deli by noon, in cream wool, and she hugged me hard, around the belly.

Nonna set a plate of toast on the table.

It was burned black again, every slice.

"Old hands," Nonna said, and sat down in the chair by the window with a rolling pin across her knees.

Margot didn't glance at it.

"Tell me everything," she said.

So I lied beautifully.

I said I wanted to leave the penthouse and disappear for good.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Said Children Were a Mistake, So I Ran With His Baby from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.