Chapter 4: Serena's Tea

I slept in the guest room with the door locked, and I didn't sleep.

At five I gave up and went downstairs in my socks.

A cup of coffee sat on the kitchen table.

Beside it lay a spoon, a sugar bowl, and a note in Vincent's square handwriting: You stir it. I'll be at the club.

There was no tablet anywhere.

I stood looking at the cup for a long time.

Then I stirred it myself, drank it standing up, and went to the restaurant to bake.

The cooks were quiet when I came in.

Everybody on Bay Street knew by now. I put my hands in a bowl of dough and kneaded until the dough was hot.

Around ten I put down the bench scraper, washed up, and asked the driver to take me to Serena Lucchese's building.

He didn't ask why.

Four of Vincent's men stood outside the brick apartment house in the cold, two at the door and two at the corner.

They stepped aside for me and nobody said a word.

Serena opened her door before I knocked.

She was in a gray cardigan over a nightgown, her curls pinned up, her glasses on the end of her nose.

She had not slept either.

"Antonia," she said. "Oh, thank God. Come in. Please come in."

I had planned what I would say to her on the whole drive over.

None of it came out.

"I made tea," Serena said. "I was going to bring some to the restaurant, and then I thought, no, you'd throw it at me."

"I might still."

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