Chapter 4: Rock Hall

Thurston looked at the ring box. Then he looked at Margot.

Margot looked at her shoes.

"It's a gift," Thurston said. "For her birthday. Livia, you're reading into it."

"It says forever."

"It's a figure of speech."

"It's engraved, Thurston."

He opened his mouth and nothing came out of it.

I put the box on his pillow, closed, and straightened the corner of the duvet the way I did every morning.

"Congratulations," I said. "Her ring finger is a size six. Mine is a seven."

One of Rocco's men took the green suitcase from my hand, and I walked out past them without looking back.

Behind me, I heard Margot say very quietly, "Thurston, what did she mean, a Corsetti?"

Nobody answered her.

The drive to Rock Hall took an hour and ten minutes.

Rocco sat beside me in the back of the car and did not talk. He kept his hands on his knees and his eyes on the road.

I had gone to sleep against that shoulder in the back of a car when I was eight.

I sat up straight.

The house was at the end of a gravel road, with water on three sides and a porch light burning over the door.

It was a plain white house with a slate roof. It was bigger than it looked from the drive.

"Whose is this?" I asked.

"Mine."

"You never had a house."

"I had an apartment over the club for twelve years," he said. "I bought this four years ago."

The front door opened before we reached it.

A small round woman in a flour-dusted apron stood in the light with both hands pressed to her mouth.

"Zia," I said.

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