Chapter 5: Three in the Morning

At three in the morning there was a line of light under the study door at the bottom of the front stairs.

I stood in the dark hall in a borrowed gray sweater and wool socks.

I hadn't decided to go down.

My feet had.

I put my hand on the door and pushed it open without knocking.

The study was lined with ledgers and old photographs, and lit by a single green-shaded lamp.

Rocco sat behind a heavy desk with his sleeves rolled and his tie gone.

A dark wool overcoat hung over the back of the chair beside him, a younger man's coat, cut narrower than his.

On the blotter in front of him stood a square bottle of grappa with the seal still on it.

He had a glass.

It was empty and clean.

He was looking at the bottle, and he did not turn around.

"Rosaria sent you," he said.

"She told me to look at what you do."

"What did you think you'd see?"

"A man drinking," I said.

"You're not."

"I haven't opened it since Dario.

"I take it out and put it on the desk.

"That's the whole thing."

He turned the glass a quarter-turn on the blotter.

"It was his," he said.

"He gave it to me at Christmas.

"He said, 'Open it when you're happy, Rocco.' That was the joke.

"I never was."

I stood in the doorway and didn't go in.

"The coat?" I said.

"His."

"It was in his car on the Cranston road.

"I wear it sometimes when I sit here.

"Not tonight."

I had come downstairs to hate him a little more, and it wasn't working.

"At the table today," I said.

"You looked at your plate."

"I did," Rocco said.

"You let that man say what he said about my father's blood."

"Yes," he said.

"Then you walked forty feet with a plate," I said.

He lifted his eyes.

In the green light the scar through his eyebrow looked like an old white thread.

"Both of those are true," he said.

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