Chapter 18: The Wake

We buried my father on Thursday afternoon, and that night the wake filled the house on Federal Hill.

Three hundred people came through the front door.

They kissed my cheeks and called me the boss's daughter, and I let them.

Silvio Ruzzo did not come.

Near midnight, the nurse who had sat with my father found me in the hall and put a folded paper in my hand.

"He woke once," she said. "Around two. He couldn't make the words, so I wrote down what I understood."

It was a sheet torn from her pad, with five words in careful capitals.

TELL HER IT WAS ME.

I read it standing between the coat rack and the kitchen door.

It was me.

The films, and Danny, and the five men, and the silence at the table.

He had wanted me to know it was him and not the world, and not me.

I folded the paper and put it in my bra, against my skin.

I did not cry in front of three hundred people.

When the last cousin had gone and the caterers were stacking chairs, I found Remo in the dark hallway outside my old room.

He was standing with his back to the wall, with his arm in a fresh sling and the bruises on his face gone yellow.

"They've gone," he said. "Go to bed, Lucia."

"Come in with me."

"You're grieving."

"I'm asking."

"Your terms," he said.

"My terms."

"No touching. You said, not until you say." His mouth moved in a ghost of the old smile. "You've said it twice now. I'm losing track."

"Remo."

"I'm only asking which time it is."

I took his tie in my fist and pulled him through the door.

"This is the time I say," I said.

I kicked it shut behind us.

The room was the one I had slept in since I was six, with the single bed and the school trophies on the shelf.

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