Chapter 5: The Apology

On Saturday night Nico showed me his plan for Gina, and it needed me to stay in room nine.

He would get into the clinic while Marco sat at the Sunday table with every capo he owned.

He would walk her out through the loading bay.

"And you stay here," he said. "That's the rule."

"What happens to me after?"

"You get on a plane."

"And what happens to the lot sheets? To Silvia? To the doctor?"

He rubbed his face.

"One thing at a time," Nico said.

I thought about the forty people at my mother-in-law's table, clapping for a baby that cost me four of mine.

I thought about Gina's split lip.

On Sunday at five o'clock I took the bus to Bloomfield Avenue in the one clean dress I had packed, with forty pages in my bag.

Nico had printed them at a copy shop in Kearny.

He had told me it was for the lawyer.

I had told myself I would not use them.

The Barzini house sat at the end of a street lined with parked Lincolns.

I rang the bell at my own front door, because I did not know if my key still worked.

The housekeeper opened it and covered her mouth.

The dining room went quiet as I walked in.

Forty chairs, white cloth, a leg of lamb on the sideboard.

At the head sat Marco.

He rose and came to me with both arms out, and I let him hold me.

He smelled of his cologne and his mother's soap.

"You came home," he said into my hair. "Thank God."

"I came to apologize," I said loudly, so the table could hear.

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