The Don's Animal-Talking Little Girl novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Her Voice

I pressed stop so hard the button stuck.

Teo's hand came out for the recorder.

"Play it."

"Not here." I tipped my head at the step behind us.

Dilly stood there in her wet pajamas with the white bird on her shoulder and the crows all around her.

She was looking at the recorder.

"Is that my mom?"

Teo couldn't answer her.

I could.

"Yes, baby. That's her voice."

"Can I hear more?"

"Some day. Not tonight. Tonight it's grown-up talk, and you're frozen."

She thought about that.

Then she turned and looked up at the angel.

The biggest crow on its shoulder made one short, dry sound.

"He says okay," Dilly reported. "He says it took you long enough."

Teo laughed, and it broke in the middle.

He pushed the loose stone back into the angel's base with his bare hands.

I carried Dilly up the hill to the car.

She was asleep on my lap before we passed the restaurant.

The cat rode home on the dashboard.

At the house I put her in dry pajamas and tucked her into the canopy bed.

Teo nailed her window shut himself, three nails, still in his white shirt with the sauce on it.

A guard sat outside her door on a kitchen chair.

Not the one from the gate.

Teo had sent that one home without a word, which was worse than any word.

Then he looked at me, and I looked at the recorder in my hand.

"Not in the house," he said.

We went down to the garage and got into his car in the dark.

He checked under both seats with his phone light, then the dash, then the visors.

Since the driver, he checked everything.

I put the recorder on the console between us.

"There's more than one file," I said. "Three."

"Play them."

The first one was the rain again, and her breathing.

"Teo. If I'm dead, it was Ignazio. I'm at Mamma's vault. It's raining and I'm so scared my teeth are going. The second file is him. I made it in his kitchen on Sunday with this in my pocket. Listen to all of it. Then listen to me."

The second file was a kitchen.

A pot lid. A spoon on a pan. A man humming.

I knew the hum. I'd heard it at my own wedding.

"I saw the papers, Zio," Agata said. "The river routes. You sold Papa's routes."

"Cara. Sit. Eat something. You're too thin."

"Did Papa know?"

The spoon stopped.

"Your papa would have known by Easter," Ignazio said. "His heart was very tired. I helped it rest."

A chair scraped.

"A pillow is a gentle thing, Agata. Gentler than what your father would have done to me."

Teo made no sound at all.

His hands were on the steering wheel at ten and two, and his knuckles had gone white.

"Your brother will never believe you," the warm voice said. "He loves me. Now eat."

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