Chapter 10: Blood Money

"A dowry," I said. "Like a goat."

"Like a daughter of this house," my father said. "It's how it's done."

"Whose idea was it?"

He paused with his hand on the gate.

"It came up at the table."

"Who brought it up at the table, Papà?"

He looked at me then, sharp, the way he used to look at me over my homework when he knew I'd copied it.

"Tomorrow," he said, and went inside.

The lunch was on the terrace under a canopy of grapevines.

One long table with a white cloth, set for fourteen.

Twelve old men from the families around Palermo, in dark suits despite the heat.

My father at the head.

Dario at his right hand.

And at his left, where he had always sat, my father's underboss.

He was fifty-eight now, broad and soft in the middle, with thick gray eyebrows and a gold chain at his open collar.

He stood up when I came out onto the terrace.

He spread his arms.

"The little one," he said. "Look at her. Home at last."

He kissed me on both cheeks.

His aftershave was the same as when I was six.

I sat down across from him and smiled.

"Thank you," I said. "You look well."

"And you look American."

A few of the old men laughed.

The food came. Pasta with sardines, the bread still warm, the wine from my father's own vines.

Nobody talked business until the fish.

Then the oldest man at the table, at the far end, wiped his mouth and set his napkin down.

"Salvo," he said. "We agreed to the marriage. We agreed to overlook what was in the papers. Now there is the question of the dowry."

My father nodded.

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