Chapter 23: Sundays

Domenico stood with the ledger flat under his good hand, and I read the line aloud over his shoulder.

Nobody else on earth could follow my loops and ticks.

I had never translated them for anyone.

"The Santangelo boy died in Warehouse Nine," I read slowly.

"My slip paid for the door. I do not know why. I will find out."

"I wrote it the day I heard."

He turned the page.

Below the first line there was a second one, and a third, one for every month after.

I read them to him one by one. Still don't know. Asked D., he doesn't know. Asked Paolo, he said leave it.

"You looked for three years," Domenico said.

"I looked in the wrong direction."

"You looked." His voice was not steady.

"I read your handwriting every night, and I hated you for something you were trying to understand."

"You didn't know."

"I should have asked."

"You did," I said. "In a hotel bar, with a page. I'd have asked too."

He closed the book gently.

Then he walked around the head of the table, in front of twelve captains and Genevieve and Agnese.

He pulled me up out of the chair and kissed me.

Agnese rapped her cane once.

"Not at my table," she said. "Take it to the hall."

We took it to the hall, and the captains cheered.

Two Sundays later dinner was set in Agnese's stone house, because she said the big house felt like a bank.

She had put the leaves in the little kitchen table and covered it with her good white cloth.

Genevieve came in with a pie in both hands and her hair loose for the first time since I had known her.

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