Chapter 24: Plums on the Table

Five years after the night at the Galli table, on the morning I married him, I went to see my mother first.

The cemetery at St. Joseph's was quiet and cold.

The grass beside my father's stone had grown in thick.

I knelt and set a plum on the marker.

"It's today," I said.

The wind moved the bare branch above me.

I told her what she would have asked.

Dario had outgrown three coats and was learning to hate piano.

Alberto came to dinner on Sundays, and he walked slowly now, with a cane he needed.

Tommaso still came on Saturdays.

He sat on the floor of Dario's room and read aloud in a bad voice.

His phone stayed in a drawer in the hall.

In five years, he had never missed one.

I hadn't forgiven him.

I had stopped waiting for him to ask, and found there was room in me for that, too.

"I chose him," I said to the stone. "Nobody told me to. I'd like you to know it."

I stayed until my knees were wet through.

When I got back to the lake house, Dario was in the front hall.

He was nine now, with all his curls and one front tooth coming in crooked.

He held a leash with a very large brown dog on the end of it.

"Mama, the dog ate a flower."

"Which flower?"

"The one on the arch."

"Dario."

"It was a small piece."

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