Chapter 12: Not Tonight

On Saturday night I played him the recording.

We stood in the kitchen with the phone between us on the counter.

When Vittoria's voice said, "the second one the bartender sent over," Massimo reached out and stopped the playback.

"Again."

I restarted the clip.

He took a pen from his shirt pocket and wrote on the legal pad: Calloway bar.

"I'll have a man talk to the bartender tonight. He'll tell us who sent it."

"What if he won't talk?"

"Everybody talks to someone." He looked up. "You were very good with her."

"I was sick to my stomach."

"You didn't show it."

"She brought me Dario's drawing."

He was quiet.

"He drew my mother with a smile," I said. "The only pictures of her in that house are from the hospital."

"Then he remembered her."

"He's four."

"He remembered something." He put the pen down. "Children do."

I wiped my face with the back of my hand, and I was angry that it was wet.

"Tomorrow I have to walk into that house and look at him across a table."

"You don't have to go."

"If I stay home, Vittoria says whatever she wants to say."

"Then I'll go with you as far as the gate."

"You'll be standing outside a Galli house with your hands in your pockets."

"I've stood in worse places."

I laughed, and it broke in the middle.

He crossed the kitchen and stopped in front of me.

He didn't touch me.

He was close enough that I could smell soap and wool and a trace of lake air from his coat.

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