Chapter 18: Luca's Hall

Luca's POV

I spent the night on the corridor floor with my back against the common room wall.

I had said Go home, then, and I had heard myself say it.

It was my father's sentence, in my father's tone, and I had sworn at nine never to say it to anyone.

She had done nothing to deserve it.

She had held a pen over a line and put it down.

I hadn't stayed to see that part.

At seven the desk phone rang in the lobby two floors down, and I heard the girl on shift say Elena's name.

I was on the stairs before I decided to be.

I stopped on the landing above the lobby, where the rail hid me from the desk.

Elena came down in yesterday's shirt, with a sheet crease on her cheek and her hair in a knot.

She looked small in the empty lobby.

Her mother stood at the desk in a good coat, holding a white box tied with string.

"Elena," she said. "Thank you for coming down."

"What do you want, Mom?"

"I made something."

She untied the string and lifted the lid.

It was a tray of eggplant parmesan, still faintly warm, with the crust gone dark at the corners.

Elena looked at it and didn't move.

"Franco told me," her mother said. "It's Nonna's recipe. I got up at four. I haven't made it since the funeral."

"Neither have I."

"I know you've been hungry, sweetheart. I should have asked you what you liked years ago."

"Why didn't you?"

Her mother's hands tightened on the box.

"Your father said you were the easy one," she said. "That you never needed anything. And you didn't ask for anything, so I let myself believe it."

"I asked for a bedroom."

"I know."

"I asked for a bedroom, and you told Valentina it was hers because the money was mine."

Her mother flinched.

"I said that in a bad moment."

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