Lethal Love novel · Chapter 20 of 32

Chapter 20: Sunday Dinner

I asked him that night, the way Mr. Halsted told me to.

Dom didn't answer right away.

He sat on Gran's fitting-room bench and looked at the floor for a long time.

"Fifth Shore Partners was registered by a lawyer on Court Street," he said finally. "Same lawyer who does Gennaro's papers."

"Since when do you know?"

"Since two o'clock this afternoon."

He looked up at me. "He does my papers too. He's done them for nine years. I never asked him a question."

"Are you going to ask him now?"

"Not yet." His jaw was tight. "Sunday is dinner. Gennaro sits at my right hand. He has every Sunday since my father died."

"And you're going to sit there."

"We're both going to sit there," he said. "And pass him the bread."

Cosima's restaurant was closed on Sundays to everybody but family.

She pushed three tables together down the middle of the long room and covered them with white paper.

There were aunts I'd never met and cousins' kids running between the red banquettes with breadsticks for swords.

Gran came in her camel coat with her cast in a sling, on Dom's arm.

She looked at the table, the candles, the wine, the kids.

"Now this," she said, "is a restaurant."

Cosima kissed her on both cheeks and sat her at the head of the table, in the chair with arms.

Nobody argued.

Dom cooked.

I hadn't known he would.

He stood in Cosima's kitchen in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up and tied braciole with string, one after another.

Cosima stood at his elbow and criticized every knot.

"Too tight. Papa did them too tight."

"I'm doing them Papa's way."

"Papa's way was wrong."

"Papa's way is the only way I know."

She bumped him with her hip, and he bumped her back, and for a second they were two kids in a kitchen.

I stood in the door and watched them.

Cosima saw me watching and pointed a wooden spoon at me.

"You. Garlic. Thin as paper."

I sliced garlic thin as paper.

She looked at it and nodded once.

"Okay," she said. "You can stay."

Gennaro came at two.

He came in with a big laugh and a bakery box under each arm and his wife a step behind him.

He kissed every aunt.

He swung a cousin's kid up onto his shoulders.

Then he came straight to Gran at the head of the table and bent over her hand.

"Signora. How's the wrist?"

"Broken," Gran said.

"Terrible. Terrible thing." He touched his cross. "Bricks. In Bay Ridge. What's the world coming to?"

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