I Won't Bridge an Impossible Gap novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Seven Emeralds in the Lining

Two Montanari men find the Ruffo emerald sewn into Nina's suitcase in front of Teresa's whole queue. She walks it up the hill herself, and Alessio's car follows.

I slept three hours on Teresa Bruno's flour-dusted sofa and woke to the smell of bread.

Teresa had been my best friend since we were six years old.

She ran the bakery under her mother's old flat in the Quartieri Spagnoli, where the streets were so narrow the laundry lines touched across them.

She had opened the door at one in the morning, looked at my suitcase, and said only, "Sit. I'll put the kettle on."

By six the first customers were lined up outside.

I tied on an apron and sliced loaves beside her, because I had never learned how to sit still while somebody else worked.

"You're really not going back," Teresa said, low, over the bread knife.

"No."

"Good." She bumped my hip with hers. "Because if he comes in here with flowers, I'm putting them in the oven."

An old woman at the counter laughed and asked for two rolls.

For one minute it felt like I was twelve again, and nobody I loved had ever been rich.

Then the street went quiet.

Two men in dark jackets stood in the doorway.

I knew them.

They were Domenico Montanari's men, the ones who stood behind his chair at every dinner.

The taller one looked at me, not at the bread.

"Signorina Esposito. The Ruffo emerald is missing from the villa safe."

Teresa put the knife down.

"The what?"

"Don Alessio's mother's necklace. It was there on Friday. It was gone this morning."

"And you came here to ask me?" I said.

"Miss Montanari says you were the last person in the guest wing."

I felt the heat climb into my face.

"I was in the guest wing because he asked me to stay there. I have never opened that safe in my life."

"Then you won't mind opening your case."

The line of customers had turned around to watch.

Teresa came around the counter and stood between us.

"You walk into my shop at six in the morning and call my friend a thief? Get out."

"We'll take her case with us," the shorter man said, "or we'll take her."

He put his hand on my arm.

I looked at that hand until he took it away.

"Don't touch me," I said. "I'll open it myself, and you'll watch. All of you will."

The case was on the floor behind the counter, where I had left it.

I carried it to the front and laid it flat on the flour-dusted marble.

I unzipped it.

Coats, rosary, sewing shears.

The men moved to look, but I put my palm over the wallet before they could, and I folded the coats back over it.

"Nothing here," I said.

The taller man ran two fingers along the seam of the lining.

He stopped.

"Feel that."

I felt it, too.

The thread along the bottom edge was loose, and when his finger pressed in, something hard pushed back from inside the fabric.

My stomach dropped.

I had never touched it.

He slid a knife along the seam.

Something green and gold slipped out and slid across the marble, and it landed at the feet of an old woman holding two rolls.

Seven emeralds on a chain, thick as grapes.

The whole shop gasped.

Somebody at the back whispered, "She really took it."

"Thief," said the taller man, loud enough for the street.

Teresa grabbed my wrist.

"Nina, it's a plant. Tell them it's a plant."

I did not say a word.

I was looking at the lining.

The stitches that held it were blue.

I had never owned blue thread in my life.

I picked up the necklace.

It was heavy and cold, and it was so much money in my hand that I felt dizzy.

"Give it here," the taller man said, and held out his palm.

"No."

"Signorina, that is Montanari property now."

"It is the Ruffo family's property," I said. "And it's going back to the Ruffo family, from my hands."

"You can't."

"Watch me."

I wrapped it in the clean cloth Teresa kept for the bread, and I tied the knot twice.

Then I took off my apron and picked up my case.

"I'm going to walk it up the hill," I said, loud enough for the whole queue to hear. "Every street between here and his gate. If anybody wants to see a thief, they can follow me."

"Nina," said Teresa. "I'm coming."

"No. Stay with your bread."

I went out into the morning with the necklace against my chest and the two men behind me.

The old woman with the two rolls put her bread in her pocket and followed.

Then the man from the fruit stall.

Then three women in house slippers.

By the time I reached the bottom of the hill, there were thirty people behind me.

Nobody was whispering anymore.

I had walked up that hill every Sunday for five years, with my own bus fare, to see the man I was going to marry.

Halfway up, an engine purred low behind me.

I did not turn around.

A black car rolled up alongside the crowd and slowed to the speed of my feet.

Its back window came down an inch, and I knew the shape of the man sitting there.

He did not speak, and he did not get out.

He only kept pace with me, all the way up the hill.

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