The Last Time You Chose Her novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Guest, Not Wife

Marta wakes in Pietro's grandmother's South Philadelphia house and hears his terms. The radio announces her death, the funeral, and that Irene will marry Pietro after forty days.

I woke up to the smell of tomato sauce and the sound of someone arguing with a radio.

The ceiling above me was low and yellow, with a crack.

There was a plastic bag of blood hanging from a coat hook, and a tube running from it into my arm.

My side felt as if someone had packed it with hot gravel.

"She's awake," a woman's voice said. "Don't hover, Pietro, you look like a pigeon."

A tiny old woman in a black cardigan stood in the doorway with a bowl in her hands.

Her silver hair was pinned in a bun so tight it pulled her eyebrows up.

Behind her, a shotgun leaned against the wall next to a calendar from a funeral home.

"I'm Fausta," she said. "I'm his grandmother. Eat."

"Where am I?"

"South Philadelphia. My house. Nobody comes here who I haven't fed first."

Pietro was in the corner chair.

He had taken off the wedding jacket, and his white shirt still had a brown stain on the cuff that hadn't been washed out.

I didn't think he had slept.

"The surgeon closed you up in Edison," he said. "Three hours. You lost more blood than anyone should."

"How long?"

"It's Saturday night. The wedding was this morning."

I stared at the crack in the ceiling.

This morning I had been standing in front of a mirror while my sister pinned my veil.

Fausta put the spoon in my hand and kept her own hand around it until I swallowed.

It was the best soup I have ever tasted.

I ate half the bowl.

When I looked up, Pietro had moved to the foot of the bed and was holding on to the rail with both hands.

"You should know the terms before you decide anything," he said.

"What terms?"

"You are my guest in this house. Not my wife, whatever the priest was about to say. I'll sleep in the study downstairs." He said it flat, like reading a contract. "Nothing happens between us unless you're healed and you tell me yourself."

"You don't have to put it in writing."

"I do," he said. "You were handed to me by a woman who'd have handed you to anyone."

Fausta made a small noise and went to the window to fiddle with the curtain.

"Fine," I said. "Guest."

"Good."

He still hadn't let go of the rail.

I looked at his hands, at the knuckles gone pale, and I told myself he was tired.

"Pietro," I said. "The route. You said somebody in my house sold it."

"The cars were supposed to go down Broad Street. At eight this morning, the route was changed to the river road, by a single text to the drivers." He didn't look away from me. "Only four people in your house knew. Name them."

I didn't have to think.

"My mother, because nothing happens without her. Ugo, because he plans every route. The driver."

"And Irene," I said. "She asked for the river road. She said the crowd on the cathedral steps would trample us."

He waited.

"She cried the whole way," I said. "I could hear her screaming my name while I was bleeding."

Pietro said nothing at all.

Fausta crossed the room and put the radio on the dresser, near my head.

"The news has your name," she said. "I thought you'd rather hear it from me."

She turned the dial.

A man's voice came out of the speaker, grave and unhurried.

"The Newark bride who was shot in a brazen ambush on her wedding day has died of her wounds. Marta Sartorelli was twenty-eight."

I put my hand over my mouth.

"A funeral Mass will be held Thursday at Saint Anselm's. Her mother, Rosalba Sartorelli, said in a statement that the family is devastated, and that the peace between the Sartorelli and Calderara families will go on."

"Her younger sister, Irene, will marry the Calderara heir after forty days of mourning."

Fausta switched it off.

Nobody said anything for a while.

"They didn't wait one night," I said.

Pietro sat down on the edge of the chair.

"No," he said. "They didn't."

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