Chapter 24: Dessert

The Gattuso table sat sixty people that night, and for the first time in its history, half of them were under ten.

Kids knelt on the good chairs with their elbows in the gravy.

A boy of six had put a dinner roll in each pocket, in case.

My father watched him do it from the head of the table, and instead of scolding, he slid his own roll across.

"Plenty more where that came from," he said.

The boy stared at him as if he were a statue that had spoken.

"Everyone eats here," my father said. "Nobody counts."

I had written the rules on the wall of the dining room that afternoon, in marker, on a roll of butcher paper.

It had been my idea, and Rocco's mother had added half of them.

The first said that nobody locks a door on a child.

The second said that nobody holds a key to someone else's room.

The last said that the Don washes his own plate on Sundays.

My father had read the last one three times and then asked who had come up with it.

Rocco's mother had raised her hand without a trace of shame.

She sat next to him now, in the chair that had been my mother's, and she passed the bread without being asked.

The night nurse sat across from me, eating her third helping of lamb.

I had tested the lamb.

I had tested everything, and so had the retired cop, with a pen of his own, from the donation box.

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