Chapter 16: Her Terms

Tara fell asleep in Silvio's guest room before nine.

I checked her pulse twice, and the second time she mumbled that I was being annoying.

I took that as good news.

Bruno brought up a tray of toast and tea, one-handed, and set it down without a word.

On his way out, he stopped in the doorway.

"She's family," he said. "That's the rule in this house."

Then he went.

I found Silvio in the study at the end of the hall.

He stood at the window with his back to the room, and a folded paper lay on the desk beside the lamp.

"That's the note," he said, without turning. "Your mother's signature, my father's seal. I took it from her kitchen table this morning."

"You went to see her."

"I wanted to see where it began."

I picked up the paper.

It was a single sheet, soft at the folds.

Four hundred thousand dollars was typed in the middle, and Joan Rafferty's name was signed under it in blue ink.

My mother's handwriting leaned the way it did on my school permission slips.

"You could have burned it," I said.

"I could have."

"Why didn't you?"

He turned around.

"Because it was your mother's debt and your life," he said. "I wanted you to be the one who decided what happened to it."

I looked at the note.

For a month I had believed this paper, and the man who held it, had bought me for the price printed on it.

Then I thought of the Tuesday in September, and the folder.

I thought of him saying I don't buy women, flat, to a mother who was selling.

I looked at the man across the desk, who had refused it.

"I said a thing to my sister," I said. "One year, then I'm out."

"I know."

"It was true when I said it. I wanted to get away from the whole family and I used you to do it."

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