Chapter 19: Sorry Is Not a Door

The next night the long table was full again, and this time they gave me a chair with arms.

Alberto sat at the head with Dario's blue bag at his feet. Dario himself was upstairs with the nurse.

Massimo stood in the hall outside the double doors, where I had told him to wait.

"You don't have to listen," he had said.

"I want you to hear it."

"Why?"

"Because it's the last time anyone says it to me in this house."

Now Tommaso stood.

He wore a plain dark suit and no tie.

His signet ring was gone from his finger, and I noticed that before anything else.

"I asked for the table," he said. "I want to say this where my father and every man here can hear it."

The room went still.

"Elisa. I tied your wrists. I locked you in that wardrobe.

"I heard my phone ring four times with the center's number, and I let it ring."

His voice was rough.

"I didn't read the record.

"I was told what to believe by a woman I trusted more than my wife.

"I believed her because it was easier than looking at you."

A capo coughed. Nobody else moved.

"I'm sorry," Tommaso said. "I have no right to ask you for anything. But I'm asking."

"What are you asking?"

"Come home."

His eyes were red.

"I'll put Neri's name out to every house in Illinois.

"I'll sit on the floor of Dario's room until he knows my face again.

"I'll give you the house and the name and anything in it. We were married five years. We have a son."

He sounded as though he meant it.

That was the worst part.

I looked around the table at the men who had called me a whore two nights before, and not one of them could meet my eyes.

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