Chapter 15: Sunday Dinner

Marta's POV

I didn't hurry.

Ilario brought Fiamma into the house at four in the morning with her hands in front of her, and I sat her at the kitchen table and let her cry.

She said she wanted to come back.

She said Ettore had made her do it.

I made her coffee, and I listened to every word, and I said nothing.

By morning I had read her phone.

It had taken me most of the night, a finger under every line, and I had read it twice.

On Sunday evening I opened the club doors and set out the long tables, as my grandfather had on Sundays before I could read.

Eighty people came.

The captains' wives sat on one side, and the old women from the parish sat on the other.

The men stood along the walls with plates.

Nunzio carried bread, and he would not look anyone in the face.

Ilario stood at the back with his arms crossed, and Fiamma sat beside me at the head table in a clean blue dress that I had lent her.

She had curled her hair for it.

She thought it was a welcome.

I had put a covered dish in front of her, the one she had carried to the club on the day of the soup.

"Eat," I said. "You made it."

"Marta." She laughed, nervous. "Everyone's looking."

"They should."

I stood and tapped my glass with a spoon.

The room went quiet in ranks.

"My grandfather sat in this chair every Sunday for forty years," I said. "He used to say a family is the people who know what you owe them."

"I want to tell you what one of us owes."

Fiamma's hand stopped on her fork.