Chapter 9: Santo's Reason

Santo's POV

I woke in a bed for the first time in a year, and for a moment I did not know where I was.

Viola was asleep with her cheek on my arm and her hair across my chest.

My jacket hung on the chair, and the inner pocket lay open.

The photograph was not in it.

I found it on the pillow beside her hand, face up, where she had left it for me to find.

She had seen it, and she had put it down and gone to sleep without a word.

I lay still a long time.

She had asked me for one true thing, and she had not asked me for this one.

She was giving me until Saturday.

I did not deserve it.

On Saturday afternoon the kitchen at the cliff house was empty except for Gaspare.

He had been sitting at the long table since dawn with a cold coffee.

"Tell her tonight," he said, before I had closed the door. "Before the dinner. Not in front of that man."

"If I tell her tonight, she'll ask me to prove it, and I can't prove it in a kitchen."

"She'll forgive a kitchen. She won't forgive a table."

"She might not forgive either."

Gaspare put down his cup.

"Don Santo," he said.

He only used my title when he was frightened.

"You have carried this for twenty-three years. Let one person carry it with you."