Chapter 7: Two Years Later

Mauro went out to the black car with his father's old shotgun held low against his leg.

I watched from the bedroom window with Luca asleep on my shoulder.

The driver's window came down, and I saw Mauro lean to speak to him.

They talked for less than a minute.

Then the man in the car laughed, shook his head and drove off toward the main road with his headlights on.

Mauro came back up the stairs slower than he had gone down.

"A tourist," he said. "He wanted a motel."

"He wasn't a tourist."

"No." Mauro sat on the edge of the bed. "He had a Providence accent and a Barone ring."

"What did he ask?"

"I told him the nearest motel was in Belfast. He asked for the name of my street."

"Did you give it?"

"I gave him my mother's cousin's street, three miles inland."

He took my hand and Luca's foot in the same grip, and his own hand was shaking.

"You can't stay on this coast, Alessia."

"Where would I go?"

"I don't know yet. Give me a week."

I gave him the week.

Then I gave him two years, because nothing came of it.

I let myself believe the car had been a mistake.

Luca was nearly two, and he talked in long serious sentences that had two real words in them.

He called Mauro's mother Nonna and the cat Mister.

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