Chapter 6: Hermantown

Helvi's house in Hermantown smelled of cardamom bread, the same as every Sunday of my life.

I drove up the hill road in Gio's second car, a gray Subaru he said belonged to nobody.

One of his men followed me in a pickup and parked at the bottom of her street.

He stayed in it with the engine off.

My mother opened the kitchen door before I could knock.

She was sixty-one and five-foot-three, in a quilted vest over a flannel shirt, with her reading glasses on a chain.

She looked at my face and said, "Sit."

I sat at the table my father had built.

She put a mug of coffee in front of me and then took it away again and put a glass of milk there instead.

"You're pregnant," she said.

"How did you know?"

"You didn't touch the coffee on the way in."

I put my hands around the milk.

I had planned how to say this for two days, and none of it came out.

"It's my boss's," I said.

"His name is Gio.

"We're engaged."

Her face did not change.

"Engaged," she said.

"To the man who signs the checks at that yard."

"Yes," I said.

"His last name," Helvi said.

"Mom," I said.

"His last name, Raisa."

"Brandisi," I said.

The bread timer went off on the counter.

She did not move to turn it off.

She stood with one hand flat on the back of a chair, and every bit of color went out of her face.

It happened slowly, like a tide going out.

The timer rang and rang.

"Mom?"

She turned it off.

She turned back and sat down across from me, and she folded her hands on the oilcloth, and I saw that they were shaking.

"You will not live in that house," she said.

"I already do," I said.

"Then you will leave it," she said.

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