Chapter 12: She Can Wait

I got into the pantry with one slipper and my robe tied wrong.

Pietro went out the back door and over the garden wall, with his shoes in his hand.

Fausta shoved the broken salt shaker under the stove with her foot and put the kettle on.

"Leave the door open a crack," she whispered. "Not wide. A hair."

The pantry smelled of oregano and onions, and I stood between a sack of flour and a shelf of jarred peppers, and I put my eye to the gap.

The front bell rang.

Fausta took the shotgun off the wall and set it behind the bread bin.

Then she went to answer it.

I heard two sets of footsteps, and one of them was my mother's.

I would have known it anywhere.

It was an even, measured step, a heel and a toe, the walk of a woman who has never been late because everyone else was early.

She came into the kitchen in a black coat, with her hair pinned up and her crucifix in the open collar.

She had lost weight.

"Signora Calderara," she said. "Thank you for seeing me at this hour."

"You didn't give me a choice, with two cars in my street," Fausta said. "Sit. Coffee?"

"No."

"Sit anyway."

My mother sat.

She sat three feet from the rug where I had slept, and she folded her hands on the cloth.

I could see her clearly through the crack, the hard line of her jaw and the grey in her hair.

I couldn't breathe.

"I came about the wedding," she said.

"Of course you did."

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