She Tried to Poison Me, but My Plant Died First! novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Sunday Table
By noon on Sunday, forty men and a dozen women filled the Gattuso dining room, and none of them had touched the food.
Every family in Philadelphia sat at that table.
Rocco's mother sat at the far end in her good black dress with her hands in her lap.
My father stood at the head, in a charcoal suit, a little grey but upright.
The doctor had begged him to stay in bed.
He had told the doctor that he would lie down when he was dead.
I sat at his right hand in my vest, with a can of beans on a plate in front of me, and nobody laughed.
Rocco sat on my other side.
His hand was on my knee under the table.
Fiora hadn't been found.
Six men had searched the grounds and the roads all night, and my father had said, "Keep the doors closed and let her come."
"Friends," he said.
The room went quiet.
"I called you here to say a thing a man doesn't like saying."
He took a breath.
"Eighteen years ago my daughter was taken from this house. I was told that the Varenna family took her."
A murmur ran around the table.
Rocco's mother didn't move.
"I told every one of you the same thing," my father said. "I cut Varenna out of every table in this city. Then I sent men after the head of that house."
The murmur stopped.
"That man was Rocco's father, who stood up at my wedding."
He looked down the length of the table at Rocco's mother.
"Signora."
She raised her eyes to him.
"I was wrong," he said, in a voice that carried to the doors. "Your husband never touched my child. I killed him on a lie, and I should have asked him for the proof."
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