Chapter 30: The East Window

The oldest capo sat at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee he had made himself.

He was seventy-one, with white hands and a cane, and he had stood when I walked in.

"Donna Rosaria."

"I'm not a Donna anymore. My husband gave up the chair."

"The chair gave itself to you," he said. "Twelve men saw it."

Gaspare stood in the doorway behind me, in yesterday's shirt.

He didn't speak, and I felt him not speaking.

"The Family wants you at the head of the table," the capo said. "Not as his wife. As yourself."

"For how long?"

"For life."

"No."

He blinked.

"I'll take it for one week," I said. "To set three rules, and then I'll hand it to whoever you choose."

"Three rules."

"One. No man in this Family lays a hand on a woman or a child, whatever the quarrel. The first who does answers to me, from wherever I am."

"Agreed."

"Two. The fish market belongs to the men who worked it. Every truck driver gets his back pay from Placido's accounts."

"The Family will be glad of it."

"Three. No war starts until the Don's wife has heard the reason in the room, in person, with the door open."

He looked at the cane in his hand for a while.

"That last one is new," he said.

"It's the one that would have kept my sister out of Bagheria."

He nodded slowly.

"And the Don? What does he do?"

"Ask him," I said.

I didn't turn around.

"I have no title," Gaspare said, behind me. "I'll sit where the new Don puts me."

"Where would you sit?" the capo asked me.

"Wherever I put him," I said. "Which is next to me, and not at the head."

The old man laughed, one short bark.

"Palermo will hear that by noon."

"Good," I said. "Let them."

The Family met that night and I set my rules in front of fifty men, and they voted yes.

Four days later, a ferry and a small plane had carried us across an ocean to a gravel landing strip on an island with one house.

A woman in her sixties stood at the end of the strip with a ring of keys.

"Signora Marchetti," she said, in careful Italian. "Signor Marchetti."

I opened my mouth to correct her.

"It's the housekeeper who sent the letter," Gaspare said quietly. "She was told the names we might use."

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