Chapter 24: The Fifteenth

Nico's POV

I woke up on the morning of the fifteenth with my wife's hair across my face.

The old napkin was in a frame on the kitchen shelf, where Gemma had put it at dawn.

Her phone buzzed on the floor. She read it with one eye open.

"Nonna wants us in the study at nine," she said.

"Why?"

She lifted her head. Her hair stood up on one side.

"The next claim isn't until January," she said. "I don't think this is about a claim."

We drove up the hill with the windows down and a thermos between us.

The Villa looked like itself again, with ordinary gravel and the smell of basil coming off the kitchen.

The head cook stood in the doorway with her arms folded.

"You're late," she said.

"It's eight fifty-five."

"That is late for a man who's been waiting five years."

Nonna Pia sat at her desk in the study in her black cardigan with the Date Book open in front of her.

She had the gold-capped pen in her hand.

"Close the door," she said.

We did.

"Sit."

We sat.

"I'm seventy-eight," Nonna said. "I've kept this book for fifty-one years."

"I wrote other people's names beside other people's dates, and I believed that was the job."

She looked at me over her glasses.

"It was never the job. The job was to see who was standing beside them."

She turned the book so that it faced us.

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