Dead to Him novel · Chapter 3 of 16

Chapter 3: Sunday at Seven

Kasia's father calls furious because she missed her Sunday call, a reply arrives from Kasia's own phone agreeing to sign, and Serafina turns up at the door with a folder.

Giovanni opened his eyes.

"Who is this?"

"Stan Kowal. Your father-in-law, in case you forgot. Where's Kasia?"

My father's voice filled the kitchen.

I hadn't heard it since the Sunday before last.

I went and stood close to the phone, as close as I could get.

"Dad," I said. "Dad, I'm here."

Nothing changed on Giovanni's face.

"She's not here," he said. "I don't know where she is."

"She didn't call me Sunday."

"So?"

"So she's called me every Sunday at seven for two years. Every single one."

"She called from the hospital the night your mother died. She called with the flu."

"Maybe she was busy."

"She doesn't answer her phone. I called forty times. It goes straight to nothing."

Giovanni rubbed his eyes with his thumb and finger.

"Mr. Kowal, your daughter is angry with me. She's hiding somewhere so I'll feel bad. When she's done, she'll turn up."

"You don't know her at all," my father said.

"I know she's sulking."

"Did you do something to her?"

Giovanni's voice dropped. It was the voice his men were afraid of.

"Be very careful what you ask me in my own house."

My father didn't slow down.

"If you did, I'll find out. I swear on her mother's grave I'll find out."

Giovanni hung up on him.

He set the phone on the table and looked out the window at the garden.

I stood between him and the glass.

"Call him back," I said. "Please. He's by himself. Call him back."

He picked up his coffee cup instead.

It was the chipped white one I'd bought him at a church sale. He always reached for it first.

I don't think he knew where it came from.

Teresa Ferrante came in through the back door with the groceries.

She'd kept house for the Varanos since Giovanni was a boy.

"Signora Kasia isn't up yet?" she asked.

"The signora," Giovanni said, "has run off."

Teresa set the bags down slowly.

"Her car's in the garage."

"Then she took a cab."

"She left the lights on in the workshop Friday morning. She always turns them off."

"Teresa. Leave it."

Teresa looked at him.

Then she started putting away the milk.

At nine forty, Giovanni's phone buzzed on the table.

He glanced down and went still.

I leaned over his shoulder.

The name at the top of the screen was mine.

Kasia.

The message said: "Fine. I'll sign. Don't look for me."

I stared at it.

I hadn't written that.

My hands had been broken since Saturday.

My phone had been in a pocket of a camel coat since Monday night.

I'd seen her take it off the workbench in the boat shed.

She'd scrolled through it with one gloved finger while I lay on the floor.

"He never texts you," she'd said. "Not once this month. That's embarrassing, Kasia."

Then she'd slipped it in her pocket.

Now Giovanni read the message, and something in his shoulders let go.

He smiled a little. Just at one corner.

"There," he said to Teresa. "She's fine. She's being dramatic somewhere."

Teresa was holding a carton of eggs.

"What does it say?"

"It says she'll sign."

"The signora doesn't write like that."

"How would you know how she writes?"

"She leaves me notes on the fridge every day. She writes 'please' and 'thank you.' She writes 'love, L.'"

Giovanni laughed.

"Well, she's not writing me love notes."

He typed back: "Good. Tomorrow."

The answer didn't come.

He didn't wait for one. He was already scrolling to something else.

I sat down at the kitchen table in my own chair.

The chair didn't move.

Nothing moved for me anymore.

For an hour Giovanni took calls about the warehouse.

His men had found nothing on the waterfront.

No one on Allens Avenue had seen a van at two in the morning.

"Keep asking," he said. "Somebody saw something."

At eleven the doorbell rang.

Teresa went to answer it.

I felt the pull in my chest as Giovanni stood and followed her into the front hall.

Serafina was on the step in her long camel coat, the belt knotted tight.

She had a folder in one hand. Red nails on the cardboard.

She wore long black gloves, though the sun was out and the snow was gone.

"Gio." She stepped in and kissed his cheek. "You look awful."

"Long night."

"I brought you something."

She held out the folder.

"She signed," Serafina said. "The little mouse came to my studio last night and dropped these off with my assistant."

She smiled at him.

"She didn't even have the nerve to bring them to you herself."

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