The Don's Widow Carries His Heir novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Four in the Morning

"Did you tell Massimo?" I said.

"Every year." Antonia looked at her hands. "Every year on the anniversary I told him I saw a young man with slicked hair. And every year he said, Ma, that's half of Cranston. Bring me proof."

"He believed paper," Nick said quietly.

"He believed paper."

Nobody said anything else all the way back up the Hill.

We dropped Antonia at the gate.

She stood under the porch light and looked at me through the car window for a long moment.

Then she lifted her hand.

It wasn't a wave. It was a woman checking that something was still there.

I couldn't sleep.

At three thirty I gave up and went downstairs to the bakery in my leggings and an old sweatshirt from culinary school.

The new plywood over the front window made the room feel like a cave.

I turned on the ovens. I turned on the radio low.

I was cutting butter into flour when I heard Nick on the back stairs.

He stood in the doorway in a grey T-shirt and sweatpants with his hair sticking up on one side.

"It's three thirty," he said.

"I know."

"Bakers are insane."

"Bakers are fine. Everyone else sleeps through the best part."

"What's the best part?"

"This." I pointed my knife at the dark window, the warm ovens, the radio. "Nobody wants anything from you yet."

He came in and leaned on the steel table across from me.

He watched my hands for a while.

"Show me," he said.

"No."

"Lia."

"You'll make shingles."

"I'll make better shingles."

I sighed and slid a block of dough across the table to him.

"Press. Don't squeeze. You're not choking it."

He pressed.

He squeezed.

I came around the table and put my hands over his.

They were big hands, rough on the knuckles. A thin white scar ran across the back of the right one.

"Like this," I said. "Heel of the hand. Push it away from you. Fold it back."

He did it.

Then he did it again, slower, and it was right.

"There," I said.

I didn't take my hands off his.

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