Chapter 10: The Sewing Room

"Into our house," I said.

"Into my house." He put the keys in his pocket. "You left it."

"Then I'm coming for my mother's things."

"Come whenever you want."

"Tonight. Before she touches them."

He stopped at the door with his four men behind him.

For a second he looked like he wanted to say something else.

Then the bell rang, and he was gone.

Papa came out of the back office. He'd heard every word.

"I'll call my cousin with the van," he said.

"No. I'll hire movers. Strangers. Nobody who has to choose a side."

At seven that evening, a moving truck with a Long Island phone number on the side double-parked on our street in Carroll Gardens.

Three young men in matching T-shirts got out and looked up at the brownstone.

"Just a few boxes?" the foreman said.

"Just a few boxes."

I walked up the stoop and rang my own doorbell.

Vittorio's mother opened the door.

She was sixty-one, small, in black since her husband's funeral two years ago.

Her silver hair was set every Saturday at the same salon on Court Street.

She looked at me. She looked at the three movers.

She stepped back and held the door wide.

"Your mother's linens are in the hall closet," she said. "I've already taken them down."

There was a stack of white boxes on the hall table. She'd labeled them in her neat church handwriting.

PELLEGRINO. LINENS.

My throat closed.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me. Go get the sewing box before she does."

"Before who does?"

The answer came down the stairs in cream silk.

Silvia had changed out of her hoodie.

Behind her, two Corsetti soldiers carried suitcases. Lots of suitcases. A garment rack. A bassinet still in its box.

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