Chapter 5: The Right Formula

I read the summons twice, standing in the nursery doorway, and then I folded it into my back pocket.

"Account for Family money," I said. "He means the check."

"He means anything he can make stick," Santo said. "His lawyer has been at the council's door since noon."

"A check the lawyer brought to my bed himself."

"That's your word against his. The council doesn't weigh words. It counts who is standing next to whom."

He said it flatly, without any pity, and I liked that better than comfort.

Daisy woke up around eight, and I fed her in the rocking chair.

The formula was warm, because the housekeeper had left the bottle warmer plugged in with water ready.

I watched my daughter eat with her eyes shut and her fists tucked under her chin.

For the first time in two days nobody was watching me do it.

A shadow filled the doorway.

"I'll go," Santo said.

"You can stay."

He didn't come in. He leaned on the frame with his arms folded, a big man in a small doorway.

"Do you want to hold her?" I asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"My hands are bigger than her head."

I laughed.

It surprised both of us.

He looked at the floor and almost smiled.

Later, after she was asleep, I went down to the kitchen for water and found the garbage bag open on the table.

Santo's housekeeper had folded my coats on a chair.

She'd set the framed photo of my studio on the counter, and my mother's cookbook beside it.

At the bottom of the bag was a green cloth ledger.

I had forgotten I owned it.

It was the book I had kept when I opened my studio, with every order and every invoice, written in my own handwriting.

Santo stood at the end of the table with the ledger in his hands.

"I didn't open it," he said. "It fell out when she lifted the bag."

"It's fine. Look."

I turned to the last pages and laid it flat.

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