Chapter 7: The Roof

I turned around in the doorway.

"My mother never said the word forgive in her life," I said. "She said 'fine' and fed you. That's how you knew."

Santino didn't answer.

"Livia has known her six years," I said. "I knew her twenty-one. You should ask yourself why you believe the stranger."

I walked out past the housekeeper, who held the front door and lowered her eyes.

Nathaniel had the engine running.

He took one look at my face and didn't ask anything until we were past the gate.

Then he said, "Do I need to go back and bite somebody?"

"Tripod would do it better."

In the back seat, Tripod sighed and put his head on my shoulder.

I cried from Lake Forest to Fullerton.

Nathaniel drove with one hand and passed me napkins from the glove box with the other, and he never once told me it was okay.

On Friday, Santino sent the car.

Not for me.

It pulled up outside the bakery at four in the afternoon, and the driver got out with two men I'd seen at the gate.

They didn't come in.

They stood on the sidewalk by the front window and looked at Nathaniel through the glass.

Nathaniel's junior, a kid of twenty-two with a buzz cut, slid lower in his chair.

"Are those clients?" he whispered.

"No," Nathaniel said. He set down his pencil. "Those are the concrete guys."

He started to get up.

"Sit down," I said. "They're mine."

I went out the front door into the cold.

The driver was about forty, thick-necked, with a gray scarf.

He'd stood behind my chair for three hours while my mother died.

"Mrs. Corsi."

"What are you doing here?"

"Mr. Corsi wants a word with your boss. About his lease. About his permits." He looked past me at the window. "About who he hires."

"Give me your phone."

He blinked.

"Your phone," I said. "You took mine. Give me yours."

The two men looked at each other.

The driver hesitated, and then he took his phone out of his coat, because he'd been taking orders from people named Corsi for twenty years.

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