Chapter 24: The Pen

On the first Sunday of October, a year after the dinner, I sat at the long Brandolini table with my feet up on a chair.

I was five months along, and Lorenzo had forbidden me to carry a plate.

I had carried three.

"Sit," Ilaria said from the head of the table.

She wore round glasses with thick lenses, and she saw everything through them.

"I am sitting."

"You are about to stand again. I can see it."

"You can see my chair?"

"I can see your face, which is the same thing."

Lorenzo laughed from the sideboard.

He laughed often now.

It had been a surprise to the whole house, and the cook had cried the first time.

I ate the roast and the bread and the green beans.

Around me the table was loud.

The consigliere argued with the doctor about a boat.

Two of the dock foremen had come up the hill for lunch with their wives.

One of them had brought his baby, who threw a spoon at Ilaria, and Ilaria caught it.

At the end of the meal, the housekeeper came in with a tray.

She put a grey envelope beside Lorenzo's plate.

He looked at the handwriting.

His face did not change.

"The guard at the three-flat brought it up this morning," she said quietly. "The lady asked him to, Don Brandolini. She said it was important."

Lorenzo said nothing.

I felt the table go still, one chair at a time.

The woman who wrote that hand was serving eighteen years in the three-flat by the docks, with a guard on the street.

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