Chapter 28: The Sentence She Wanted

"No," I said.

"You said you'd never again decide for me."

"I said I'd ask you what you want. I didn't say I'd agree."

Venera stood in the doorway with her bag on her shoulder.

She looked smaller than I had ever seen her.

"I want to say it to a judge," she said.

"Not to Ficarra. Not to you. To the people whose job it is to write it down."

"They will put you in prison."

"Yes."

"For fifteen years, maybe twenty."

"I know what I did, Rosaria."

"Papa's lawyers could say it was a quarrel. A drunk girl, a bag with a gun in it, a bad moment. You'd serve five."

"That's what Papa wants. That's the lie."

"It's a lie that gets you out in five years."

"And I would come out as the girl who cried, and everybody forgave her."

She laughed, and it cracked.

"I'd rather be the woman who stood up and said I shot her, and I knew."

Gaspare had come off the wall.

He stood a pace behind me.

"I can find you a lawyer who will keep the sentence short," he said.

"I know you can."

"Then take one."

"No."

Venera looked at him directly, and she was not afraid.

"You've been kind to me since I was eighteen, Gaspare. You gave me guards when I was frightened."

"I did."

"You never asked me anything. That's how I got to be someone who could do what I did."

He took it without flinching.

"I won't have a lawyer who makes it smaller," she said. "I'll have the one the court gives me. I want a sentence that matches what happened."

"You are twenty-seven."

"I'll be thirty-eight or forty-two when I'm out. I'll still be alive. She won't."

I could not speak.

My little sister had slept on my bed through every thunderstorm until she was fourteen.

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