From the Don's Son's Plus-Size Girl to His Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Boy in the Alley

"Sandwich," I said.

It came out a whisper.

Something moved in his face that I'd never seen there. Not in the elevator, not in bed.

"Nobody's called me that in sixteen years," he said.

"You left."

"I know."

"You left, and you didn't say goodbye, and my dad walked that alley with a flashlight every night until March."

He shut his eyes.

"I didn't know that."

"How would you know that? You were gone." I was holding Biscuit so hard my knuckles were white. "Where did you go?"

He came into the kitchen then.

He stopped across the counter from me, with the sandwich between us.

"February second," he said. "It was snowing. You'd gone in for dinner. I walked down to the corner to get out of the wind, by the social club."

I remembered the social club. Old men and card tables and a green door.

"There was a guy in the doorway across the street. He'd been there an hour. He had his hand in his coat the whole time."

He touched his left shoulder without seeming to know he did it.

"Your Don came out the green door at nine with two men. The guy crossed the street fast. I saw the knife."

"So you yelled."

"I didn't yell. I ran at him." He almost smiled. "I was eighty pounds. It went in here instead of in Rosario."

I stared at the white scar under his sweater, where I knew it was.

"His men took care of the guy. Rosario carried me to the car himself. He sat in the hospital for two days. When they let me out, he took me home."

"To River Forest."

"To River Forest. With Biscuit in my coat." He looked at the bear in my arms. "It was the only thing I took out of that alley."

"You kept him for sixteen years."

"He went to Wisconsin. He went to Fort Benning. He's been in a footlocker in three countries."

I put my hand over my mouth.

"Why didn't you come back?" I said through it. "You came home five years ago. You drove your father to my counter every Thursday. You stood by the door."

"I came the first week," he said. "I stood across the street and watched you through the window."

"And?"

"And your dad had just died. You were nineteen. You were behind the counter crying into the rye, and then the door opened and Tiziano walked in for Pop's sub, and you stopped crying." He said it flat, the way he said all the true things. "You looked at him like he was the sun coming up."

My face burned.

"So you didn't come in."

"I was the stray. He was the sun." He shrugged. "All I wanted was to say thank you. I didn't want to walk in there and have you look at me the way you look at a dog in the rain."

"That's what you think I'd have done?"

"That's what everybody did."

"I'm not everybody!"

It came out loud enough to ring off the brick.

"You let me go up on that roof," I said. "A whole year, and you let me."

"I know."

"You could have walked in. Any Thursday. You could have said, hey, it's me, the kid from the alley, thanks for the sandwiches."

"And then what?"

"And then I'd have made you another one!"

He just looked at me.

I came around the counter.

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