Chapter 13: Alive and Quiet

I pushed the pantry door open myself.

Red brine and broken glass lay across the tiles between us.

My mother stood in the hall doorway with one hand on the frame, and she did not move.

I had pictured this a hundred ways, and in none of them was I wearing Fausta's borrowed robe with one slipper.

"Mamma," I said.

Her mouth opened.

No sound came out.

Then her bag slid off her shoulder and hit the floor, and she crossed the kitchen faster than I had ever seen her walk.

She took my face in both hands, the way she had taken Irene's in the clinic.

Her palms were cold and they were shaking.

"You're warm," she said. "You're warm, you're warm."

She pulled me against her coat.

She smelled of the same rose soap she had used my whole life, and she held on so hard that my ribs hurt.

I stood there with my arms at my sides.

I wanted to put them around her.

I was angry at myself for wanting to.

"I lit a candle every night," she said into my hair. "I stood in your room."

She pulled back and looked me over, the hair, the robe, the pale line of the scar showing at my collar.

Then she looked at Fausta.

"You knew."

"Since the first night," Fausta said. "I held the lamp on my kitchen table while my grandson's surgeon stitched her."

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