The Mafia Lost His Queen novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Sunday

Rory didn't look at me.

He looked at the floor tiles, and his voice came out level and tired.

"The river was high, sir. You saw it. It was moving whole trees."

"I've lived on that river my whole life."

"Then you know what it does."

Silence on the line.

"She's in there," Armando said finally. "Somewhere. And I'll find her. If I have to drain it, I'll drain it."

He hung up.

Jess put the mirror down on the counter very carefully.

"That," she said, "is the husband."

"Yes."

"Right." She pulled off her rubber gloves with two snaps. "Sunday dinner's at Mum's at two. You're both coming, and nobody's talking about that man at the table."

Rory's mum did a roast every Sunday.

Beef, potatoes done in the fat, Yorkshire puddings the size of my head, and gravy in a jug shaped like a cow.

The cow had a chipped ear.

"Rory did that," his mum said, handing it to me. "Nineteen ninety-nine. He was trying to juggle."

"I was seven," Rory said.

"You were showing off for the girl next door."

"I was seven, Mum."

"Started young, then." Jess passed me the potatoes. "Never got any better at it."

I laughed into my napkin.

Rory looked at me across the table.

His mum noticed. She noticed everything.

After the beef, she made me tell her what I'd put in the pastries Jess was bringing home in boxes.

Then she made me tell her where I'd learned.

Then, somehow, with the plates pushed back and the gravy going cold in the cow, I told her about the cellar stairs.

Just that.

I gave her the short version, and left the girl in the white dress out of it.

Nobody spoke when I finished.

Rory's mum reached across the table and put her hand over mine.

Her hand was small and dry and warm, and it smelled of onions.

"You'll stay as long as you like," she said. "And you'll come every Sunday, and if that man ever knocks on my door I'll put him through the window."

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