Chapter 9: Palermo

"He used to bring me marzipan fruit," I said. "Every Christmas. A little basket of it."

"I know," Dario said. "He's been bringing it to your father's table for thirty years."

"Does my father know?"

"Not yet. I wanted you to decide how he hears it."

I looked down at the name on the page for a long time.

Then I closed the folder and gave it back.

"Not today," I said. "Let me see his face first."

We came down over the sea at four in the afternoon.

The water was so blue it looked fake.

Palermo spread out under the wing, yellow and white and crowded, with the mountains standing behind it.

I hadn't seen it in ten years.

My throat closed up anyway.

The plane rolled to a stop on a side apron away from the terminal.

Three black cars were parked on the tarmac.

A man stood in front of them alone.

He was shorter than I remembered.

His hair had gone all the way to silver, combed straight back. He wore a black suit in the heat, and a gold ring on his right hand.

An airport official in a yellow vest hovered twenty feet away with a clipboard, afraid to come closer.

"Don Salvo Caruso," I heard the man mutter to his radio. "Yes. Personally."

Dario went down the stairs first.

My father shook his hand and said something low, and Dario nodded and stepped aside.

Then it was just the stairs, and me, and my father at the bottom of them.

I walked down.

The heat came up off the concrete through my shoes.

We stood two feet apart.

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