Chapter 5: Soup at Three in the Morning

The east wing had been stripped to the walls.

My bags were on a bare mattress, and the room smelled like paint.

At three in the morning I gave up on sleep and went down the back stairs to the kitchen.

Someone had left the light on over the stove.

Tommaso sat at the long wooden table in his father's glasses, with a ledger open in front of him and a bowl of dry cereal he was not eating.

He looked up and went stiff.

"I'm not here to fight," I said.

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm hungry."

I opened the pantry and found the small star-shaped pasta on the second shelf, where it had always been.

That was all it took.

I put a pot on to boil and took the last chicken stock from the freezer.

Tommaso watched me do it with his pen held very still.

"That's the soup," he said.

"You were six, and you had a fever of a hundred and three."

"I remember."

"You said it was the only thing that stayed down."

He closed the ledger.

I set a bowl in front of him with a little grated cheese on top.

He looked at it for a long time before he picked up the spoon.

"Where did you go?" he said.

It was the first question any of my sons had asked me.

"Lisbon. I worked the front desk of a small hotel. I answered the phone in three languages and I learned to make bread."