Chapter 13: After the Cake

Nobody at the table moved.

Aunt Lucia stood with her palm flat on the cloth, and the glasses were still ringing from the blow.

I held the gold plate against my chest.

"Say it plainly," I said.

"Lucia," my father said, but the order had gone out of his voice.

"Twenty-three years I have kept my mouth shut." Aunt Lucia did not look at him. "Say it yourself, or I will."

My father took his hands off his face.

They hung open in front of him, big roofer's hands with nothing to hold.

"Dad. Is Carla your daughter?"

At the far end the old priest put down his fork without a sound.

"Yes," my father said.

He said it to the tablecloth.

A cousin by the window whispered, "Madonna," and a chair scraped, and then the room went very quiet.

Carla had not moved.

Her hands lay flat in her lap, and she was looking at him, not at me.

"Finally," she said. "You said it out loud."

She stood, and her chair went over backward, and she walked out through the kitchen without picking it up.

I heard her feet on the back stairs, quick and uneven.

I looked at my brother.

Marco had both fists against his mouth, and his eyes were red.

"Did Mom know?" I asked.

"Gia."

"Did she know?"

"She knew before I was old enough to understand it." His voice shook. "She picked that plate for Carla herself."

I stood there with my mother's plate in my hands and understood that she had known my whole life.

I walked up the table to my father's place.

He would not look up.

I set the gold plate down on top of his white china, and it sat there crooked.

"I brought you a cake," I said. "It's in the kitchen. It's after the cake now, Dad."

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out of it.

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