Chapter 13: Her Mother's Hand

I sat down on the wet floor by my father's oven with the tin in my lap.

The old baker pulled the hardware brothers out into the alley.

Teo stayed, crouched on his heels against the wall, saying nothing.

I untied the first bundle.

The first letter was dated the spring after I was born.

"Mama, she has your chin. I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. Both."

I laughed out loud, and then I couldn't stop crying, and Teo handed me a clean side towel.

There were forty-one letters.

My mother had written to her mother two or three times a year for fifteen years.

She never signed her name.

She signed every one of them the same way.

"Your daughter, who still sings the song."

In 2011 the letters changed.

"Ruggero came into the shop today. He bought a loaf of semolina and didn't eat it. He asked how old my girl is."

Then, a few months later.

"There's a car across the street some nights. Papa says I'm imagining it. I'm not imagining it, Mama."

And later still.

"I can't mail these. Everything that comes into your house goes through his hands first. You taught me that yourself."

The last envelope was thinner than the others.

It was dated December 16, 2013.

Two days before the night in the cooler.

I read it on the floor, in the smell of smoke.

Then I folded it and stood up.

"Get the car," I said to Teo.

"Where?"

"River Forest."

"She didn't send for you."

"I know."

He got the car.

Benedetta kept the twins at the florist's, with the old baker sitting in the doorway on a crate.

The old bodyguard opened the Morra door before I rang.

He saw the tin, and the soot still on my hands, and he stepped back without a word.

"Stay with the car," I told Teo.

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