Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Deep End
At her engagement party beside the pool her stepbrother once pushed her into, Roz overhears her fiance planning to drown her on their honeymoon, drops his ring in the deep end in front of everyone, and hears Santo warn her not to swim alone.
I was ten the first time I went into the Cavallaro pool.
I didn't jump.
Santo Cavallaro pushed me, then stood on the edge in his church shoes and watched me go under.
He was thirteen. His father had just married my mother.
"Your mother's a homewrecker," he said, while I choked on the water. "You'll never be a Cavallaro."
The gardener pulled me out by my collar.
That summer Santo burned my dolls on the grill.
He poured red paint on my Easter dress.
He taught his cousins to call me the bastard, because nobody knew who my father was.
Fifteen years later I stood at the edge of the same pool in a white silk dress.
I was twenty-five, and two hundred people had come out to Staten Island to watch me get engaged.
String lights hung over the water. A band played old standards under the pergola.
Every family in the city had sent somebody.
Dino Torrisi was marrying the Cavallaro stray, and nobody wanted to miss it.
Dino tapped a fork against his glass.
He was good with a crowd. He'd been good with me for six years.
Joanie Flynn, my co-coach, had told me he was too good. I told her she was jealous of my ring.
"Some of you know how I met Roz," he said.
"A college swim meet. I brought her roses, and she broke the pool record before she took them."
People laughed. I smiled. That part was true.
"But some of you don't know why she swims."
My smile stayed on my face. It didn't feel like mine anymore.
"She was ten," Dino said. "Right here. My best friend Santo gave her a little push."
He did a little shove with his champagne hand.
"Look at her now. State record. Swim coach. Santo, you should get a thank-you card."
The whole lawn laughed.
Old men in pinky rings. Their wives in gold. The cousins who used to chant at me from the deep end.
I looked across the water.
Santo stood on the far edge, in the exact spot.
He was twenty-eight now. He'd been the Don for four months, since his father's heart gave out in this house.
Black suit. No tie. Hands in his pockets.
He wasn't laughing.
He was watching me.
Then he lifted his glass.
"To Dino," he said. "Who takes her off my hands."
A few men whistled.
"After tonight she's a Torrisi," Santo said. "She can stop coming to my house."
My mother put her hand on my arm.
She was Pauline Cavallaro now, the Don's widow, and she still flinched when anyone raised a glass too fast.
I moved it off, gently.
"Excuse me," I said, and walked to the pool house before anyone could see my face.
The pool house smelled like chlorine and cigars, the same as when I was ten.
I locked myself in the little bathroom and ran the cold tap over my wrists.
That was when I heard Dino through the vent.
"You saw their faces. Every one of them heard it."
His father answered.
Tullio Torrisi. The man who had danced with me at my sweet sixteen.
"Good. Tell it again at the wedding."
"I'll tell it at every dinner until September."
A lighter clicked.
"The honeymoon," Tullio said. "The yacht. A night swim off the Narrows."
"She swims like a fish, Pop."
"So you make sure she's tired first."
Dino laughed.
It was the same laugh he used when I burned the pasta.
"When she turns up in the water," Tullio said, "two hundred people remember who tried it first."
"Santo."
"The families won't follow a Don who drowned his own stepsister. The piers come to us."
"And I'm the grieving husband."
"You're the grieving husband."
I turned off the tap.
I stood there with my hands dripping and looked at my ring.
A two-carat oval. Dino had picked it. He said it looked like a drop of water.
I dried my hands on the guest towel.
Then I unlocked the door and walked back out into the lights.
Dino was at the bar. He saw me and opened his arms.
"There she is."
I didn't go to him.
I went to the edge of the deep end, where everybody could see me, and took off the ring.
"Dino," I said.
The band stopped without being told.
"You told that story like it was funny."
His smile slipped half an inch. "Babe. It's a party."
"It was the worst day of my life."
I held the ring out over the water.
"You want to fish something out of this pool? Dive for this."
I opened my hand.
It hit the water with a small plink and sank all the way to the drain.
Two hundred people didn't make a sound.
Dino went white, then red.
Behind him, by the pergola, Tullio stood very still.
"Rosaleen," my mother whispered.
I picked up my shoes.
I walked across the lawn barefoot, through the gate and down the long gravel drive.
Footsteps crunched behind me.
Not Dino's. Too slow. Too sure.
Santo caught up with me at the fountain.
"Get out of New York," he said. "Tonight."
I laughed in his face.
"You don't get to tell me where to go anymore."
"I'm not asking."
"You haven't said a word to me in six years. You don't get to start with orders."
I turned toward the road.
"Roz."
He had never said my name. Not when I was ten. Not once since.
I stopped.
"He'll come for you in the water," Santo said. "Don't swim alone."
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