Chapter 4: The Man at the Gate

Zia Nella didn't let him in.

She walked out onto the porch with the spoon, looked at Luca through the rain, and said, "She has a doctor's appointment. Wait or leave."

He said, "I'll wait."

Then she drove Livia to urgent care in a Buick older than the stitches in her head.

The scan was clean.

The doctor said concussion, rest, no screens, and asked twice how she had fallen.

"Stairs," Livia said.

Zia Nella watched her say it and said nothing until they were back in the car.

When they turned onto the street, the black SUV was still at the gate with its engine off.

It had been two hours.

"He sat in that the whole time," Zia Nella said. "Two hours, in the rain."

"He's waiting for an apology for Tierney."

"He's waiting for something."

Luca got out as they pulled in.

His suit was creased and his collar was open and he hadn't shaved, and he didn't look like a man who ran a bank.

His eyes went straight to the strips on her scalp.

His jaw moved once.

Livia noticed it and told herself what it meant.

Guilt, she decided. Men felt guilty about furniture they broke, too.

"Shoes," Zia Nella said at the kitchen door.

"I'm not staying."

"Then you can talk to her on the porch in front of the neighbors."

Two neighbors sat on the next porch with their coffee, not even pretending to look at anything else.

Luca took off his shoes.

He stood in her kitchen in his socks, and it was the first time Livia had ever seen him smaller than the room.

"Sit," Zia Nella said.

"No."

"Then stand. Eat the toast anyway."

"I don't want anything in this house."

Zia Nella took the plate back and put it on the stove.

Luca turned to Livia and did not sit.

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