Chapter 22: The First Night

On the thirtieth of November, eight weeks to the day, I walked to Hope Street with my doctor's note in my coat pocket.

Carina had been indicted on the Tuesday after the gala.

She sat in a cell in Cranston waiting for a trial date, and her lawyer had stopped returning the neighborhood paper's calls.

Dominic had resigned from his father's company.

He had walked into the state police barracks and given a statement, though they told him the law had run out on most of it.

I did not think about any of them that night.

Elio lived in his father's house behind the yard, a narrow place with a green kitchen and a radiator that knocked.

He opened the door in a gray sweater with his sleeves pushed up.

He saw my face, and he stopped breathing for a moment.

"Friday," I said. "I got the all-clear on Friday. I've been sitting on it for two days to be sure."

"To be sure of what?"

"Of you."

He took my hand and pulled me into the hall, and shut the door with his boot.

I kissed him against the wall.

He made a rough sound in his throat, and his hands came up under my coat and pushed it off my shoulders.

It fell.

I had thought I would be afraid, and I was, a little, and I told him.

"I don't know what it'll feel like," I said against his mouth. "After."

He put his forehead against mine.

"Neither do I. We'll find out slow."

"I don't want slow."

"I know." His voice was low and unsteady. "You'll get what you want. I'm only asking for a minute."

He took me upstairs by the hand.

The bedroom was small, with a plain iron bed and a lamp, and the sheets were clean and cold.

I pulled my sweater over my head.

He looked at me in my bra and my jeans, in the lamplight, and I watched his face change.

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