The Moretti Daughter They Denied novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Sit

Fiorenza put me at the kitchen table with a towel around my shoulders.

She put a bowl in front of me.

"Eat."

"I don't want it."

"I didn't ask what you wanted. I asked you to eat."

I picked up the spoon with my left hand, and she watched me do it.

The soup was chicken and tiny pasta stars, and my stomach hurt at the first taste.

"I'm not taking charity," I said.

"Good. This isn't charity. It's Tuesday."

"You know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean." She sat down across from me and folded her floury hands. "You think if you eat my soup, you owe me a bowl."

"Yes."

"Then you owe me a bowl. One bowl. Wash it when you're done."

I laughed before I could stop it, and it turned into coughing.

She waited until I finished.

"I'll tell you the hard thing now, because you're too tired to argue," she said.

"Nonna."

"Antonella kept a book on you. Every dress, every dinner, every lesson you listened to through a wall. She wrote it all down in her head, and she showed you the total when you were six."

"I know."

"You don't know. You're keeping the same book on yourself."

I put the spoon down.

"A gift is when nobody counts," Fiorenza said. "A debt is when somebody does. That man on his knees in the dining room wasn't buying you. He was asking to stop being a man who never gave you anything."

"He waited twenty-eight years."

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