Chapter 14: Alone on the Pier

"Did you give it to her?" I asked.

"No, ma'am. The doctor doesn't let us give files to anyone. She got very cold when I said so."

"Thank you," I said. "You did exactly right."

I hung up and stood on the Sabatini steps with the phone against my chest.

Gianni was watching my face.

"Yesterday morning," I said. "She was in Manhattan, asking for my due date. And yesterday afternoon she says she was in Brooklyn, losing a baby."

"Why does she want your due date?"

"Because a baby that's coming in May is a problem for her," I said. "She's already said heir out loud."

He opened the car door wider.

"Get in, Talia."

That afternoon the lawyer called the doctor's office himself.

By evening the receptionist had a note in my file that nobody but me could see it.

By evening I had also thrown up twice, which the doctor said was normal at fourteen weeks and my mother said was Cordelia.

I went down to the pier after dinner anyway.

The new office was a used construction trailer the foreman had found in Jersey.

It had a space heater, a coffee maker and no name painted on it yet.

I liked to sit there after the crew went home.

At nine o'clock headlights came down the cobbles.

Gianni was out of his chair before I was.

"One car," he said at the window. "One man."

It was Renzo's Escalade.

He parked it at the gate and got out alone.

He stood in my yard in the cold with his hands in his coat pockets and waited.

"I'll go," I said.

"I'll be at the door."

"I know you will."

I walked out to him across the gravel.

He looked worse than he had that morning.

His collar was open and his eyes were tired in a way I knew from the year his father died.

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