Chapter 28: The Passbook

I didn't take it.

I put my hands behind my back.

"Nonno, I can't."

"You don't know what I'm going to say yet. Sit."

I sat on the edge of the new cutting table.

He turned the ring in the light from the window.

"Fifty-one years she wore this," he said. "She took it off to make bread, and she took it off to yell at customers. That's all."

"She must have been something."

"She was a terror. You would have liked her. She would have liked you more."

He held it out again.

"This isn't for him to give you. You understand? It's not for a proposal. It's not a deal."

"Then what is it?"

"It's yours. From me. Because you sat in that room two times."

He took my hand and put the ring in my palm and folded my fingers over it.

"You marry him, you wear it. You marry somebody else, you wear it. You throw him in the river, you wear it to the funeral."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

"Either way," he said. "It's yours."

He got up off the stool with a grunt and patted my cheek.

"Now let my grandson in. He's out there turning blue on purpose so you'll feel sorry for him."

I put the ring on a chain around my neck that night, with my mother's medal that Dad had given me.

I didn't tell Damiano.

He didn't ask.

The blue passbook still sat in my sewing basket, under my scissors.

It smelled a little like smoke.

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