Chapter 5: Sunday Table

Trent straightened up, patted Pope on the head, and walked out whistling.

Pope bit him.

It was the best thing that happened all week.

That night I told Elio what Trent had whispered, word for word.

He listened on the back terrace of the lake house with a glass of water he wasn't allowed to make into wine.

"The bathroom," he said.

"There was blood on the tile. I mopped it with a hotel towel. Maybe I missed some."

"Or maybe he just knows you."

He didn't say anything else.

He just looked at the water for a long time.

On Sunday, he told me to put on a dress.

"Why?"

"Family dinner."

"Whose family?"

"Mine."

Caffe Massaro was four blocks from my clinic.

I'd walked past it ten thousand times.

The front was a coffee bar with a striped awning and old men drinking espresso at the window.

The back room had a long table with a white cloth and twenty chairs.

A painting of the Bay of Naples had hung there since before I was born.

Every chair was full.

Men in good suits.

Wives in gold earrings.

An old capo at the head corner with a silver-topped cane hooked over his chair.

Elio walked in with his hand at the small of my back.

He'd been shot eight days ago.

He walked like he'd never been shot in his life.

The room went quiet.

"This is Viola Cerrato," Elio said. "Dr. Cerrato. From the animal hospital on Mayfield."

A few of the wives exchanged looks.

They'd seen the news.

"You all know what the city's saying about her," he said. "Her husband says she left him for another man."

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