Don's Regret Came Too Late novel · Chapter 11 of 32
Chapter 11: The Night Window
"Does he know?" she said.
"No. And he can't. Not yet."
"Because of her."
"Because of Davide."
Her mouth went thin.
She looked back up the stoop at the soldier carrying in the bassinet box.
"I won't tell my son," she said. "On my husband's grave."
"Why?"
"Because he called you a fishwife in front of me and I said nothing." She took my free hand in her cold one. "I said nothing for two years. I watched him go to that woman's door at two in the morning, and I said nothing."
"Signora, you don't have to..."
"Let me say this, and then I'll go inside and be polite to her." She squeezed. "Emilio came to my kitchen three weeks before he died. He sat where you used to sit. He said, Ma, I'm going to divorce her this month. I'm telling you first so you can tell Papa gently."
My heart was pounding.
"Did he say why?"
"He said she wasn't who he married. He said he'd found something out." She shook her head. "He wouldn't tell me what. He said he wanted to be sure. Then he was dead, and she was crying on my sofa, and everyone said she was a saint."
"Did you tell Vittorio?"
"I told him once. At the funeral." Her eyes were bright. "He told me grief was making me cruel."
She let go of my hand.
"Go home, Noemi. Eat something. Come to my house on Thursdays for lunch. She doesn't know where I live now. Nobody visits widows."
She climbed the stoop one step at a time and went back inside without looking back.
I didn't sleep that night either.
At one in the morning I was downstairs, sitting in the dark pharmacy, eating saltines out of the sleeve.
That was when I heard the tapping.
Somebody was knocking on the little side window by the alley.
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