The Last Time You Chose Her novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: Where I Put Her
I went down to the gate in Pietro's shirt, barefoot, with my hair a wreck.
Fausta stood in the porch light holding her slippers and a cream envelope.
"I didn't open it," she said. "I wanted to. I stood there for ten minutes with my thumb on the flap."
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me, I'm an old woman with no self-control. Read it."
The paper inside was thin, and the handwriting was my mother's upright hand, shakier than I remembered.
It was only four lines long.
"The house on Ferry Street is yours."
"I have no right to the chair at the head of the table, and I am not asking for it."
"If you ever set another chair for me, I will sit wherever you put me, and I will not speak unless you ask."
It was signed with her name and nothing else.
I read it twice by the porch light.
Then I folded it and put it in the pocket of the shirt.
"Well?" Fausta said.
"Well, she put it in writing."
"Is that all you've got to say?"
"It's all I have tonight."
She grunted and tucked her slippers under her arm.
Then she glanced sidelong at Pietro, who had come down the stairs behind me with his collar open.
"I can't keep it in," she said. "His father's driver told my sister's girl. He signed it over, Marta. At the cathedral, on a hymn box. The port, the lawyers, all of it, for the blessing. He's not the heir anymore."
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