Chapter 11: Sisters

The old capo watched my face.

He'd been watching faces for fifty years. I didn't try to hide mine.

"Well?" he said.

"Can I keep this until the vote?"

"It's a copy. She has the paper." He leaned on his cane. "You've got something to say about it?"

"Yes," I said. "In front of the table. All five of you. And her."

He looked at me a while longer.

Then he nodded once, the way Antonia did, and walked off up the alley in the rain.

Nick had read the whole thing over my shoulder.

"Why not tell him now?" he said.

"Because if I tell him now, she hears it tonight. She'll say she got mixed up, she grabbed the wrong picture, she was grieving."

I slid the copy back into its folder.

"If I tell all of them at once, with her sitting there, she has to answer in front of everybody."

"And the time stamp on yours?"

"My phone picture is blurry at the top. I need the clinic's own copy. Uncut. With their seal on it."

Antonia was already dialing.

"I'll drive to Wayland Square tomorrow," she said. "That doctor likes me now."

"Nobody likes you," Nick said.

"She likes me," Antonia said, and turned her back on him to talk.

Three weeks later the boycott still had the whole Hill.

The Carbone trucks still came up Atwells before six.

They just didn't stop.

I stood at my window with my coffee and watched one of them crawl down the block, past every closed back door.

The cooks stood on their steps in their aprons and watched it go.

The new trucks from Johnston came at five fifteen. Green, with a cow painted on the side.

The driver was an old man in a flat cap who called me "doll" and brought me a free block of butter.

"From the boss," he said. "She says welcome back."

One Friday, Paolo's two men in nice jackets walked up Atwells with their clipboards.

They got as far as the florist.

She came out onto the sidewalk with a pair of pruning shears and stood there.

The butcher's widow came out of the butcher's.

The pizza guy came out with his peel.

The natural wine couple came out with their phones.

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