Chapter 11: Twenty-Eight Cards

Livio didn't move.

The snow kept coming down on him, on his hair and his shoulders, and he didn't brush it off.

Orsola came down the steps and stopped beside me.

She had her flannel shirt on and no coat either. Like mother, like son.

"You're taller," she said.

He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

"Your father was taller," she said. "But you'll do."

"We buried you."

His voice was a boy's voice. I'd never heard it before.

"You buried a box," Orsola said. "Your father picked it out. Mahogany. He always did like to spend money on the wrong things."

"I put a rose on it." He was staring at her. "I was six. They let me put a rose on it."

"I know. I read about it in the Inquirer, in a motel in New Hampshire."

The diner door opened behind us.

"Orsola?" said the tall lobsterman. "Who is that?"

"My son," she said.

Nobody in that window said a word.

Orsola looked at Livio's shirt, soaked through, and at his bare hands.

"Get inside," she said. "Before you die of stupid. I didn't stay dead twenty-eight years to watch you freeze in my parking lot."

He came inside.

He walked past me close enough that I could smell him, leather seats and the cedar soap from our bathroom.

I hated that my body knew it before I did.

The whole counter watched him come through the diner door.

He stood dripping on the mat.

Orsola pointed at a stool.

He sat.

She put a bowl of soup in front of him. White beans, escarole.

Then he picked up the spoon, and his hand was shaking so badly it rattled on the rim.

"You used to make this," he said. "Fridays."

"Every Italian on Ninth Street made this," Orsola said, and her voice broke right down the middle of it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Vanished with the Don's True Heir from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.