Chapter 10: The Planted Bottle

Ada insisted on coming home the next afternoon.

She walked into her own dining room and found it full.

Every elder who had heard Gina's accusation in the hospital hall had come to hear the rest.

Gina sat among them in a gray dress, already crying.

"I didn't want to do this in front of everyone," she said.

"Then you shouldn't have invited them," Ada said, and took her chair.

Matteo stood behind it.

He hadn't slept, and he hadn't shaved, and the elders noticed.

A man who looked like that in this family usually meant somebody would bleed before supper.

Gina turned her wet eyes on him.

"Ask your guard what he found in my sister's room."

The room went quiet.

Nobody outside this house should have known I'd slept apart from my husband.

I looked at Gina and filed that away.

The guard who had stood outside the east room for two nights stepped forward.

He was broad, polite, and older than the young ones in the courtyard.

He set a small brown bottle on the white tablecloth.

"It was in the drawer by her bed, sir."

Honey glistened at its neck.

The elders leaned in.

One of them looked at me.

"Elena," Gina said softly, "just tell them why."

I didn't look at the bottle.

I looked at the guard.

"When did you find it?"

"This morning, ma'am."

"I wasn't in that room last night."

"I know, ma'am. You were at the hospital."

"So who went in?"

He opened his mouth and found nothing in it.

Matteo hadn't moved.

His stillness had weight in it now, and the guard could feel it.

"I sat in a plastic chair outside my aunt's room all night," I told the elders.

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