Chapter 4: In His Pajamas

The gates opened before the car stopped.

The house was long and stone and lit in every window, and men in dark coats stood on the lawn in the rain.

Nobody spoke.

Dario came around and opened my door.

"He's waiting inside," he said. "He's been waiting at the door since he hung up."

An old man stood in the open doorway with a cane he was not leaning on.

He was tall, with silver hair and a dark overcoat thrown on over a nightshirt.

His eyes were red, and they went straight to my face.

I had braced for a monster.

He looked worn thin by twenty-eight years of waiting.

"Marlena," he said.

He didn't move any closer.

"May I see?"

I stood in the rain and turned my head.

I pushed my wet hair back from my left ear.

He made a sound I will never forget.

Then he put one hand over his mouth and the other on the door frame, and his shoulders shook.

"She had it the day she was born," he said, to no one. "My wife said it looked like a drop of jam."

I didn't know what to do with my hands.

I had never been anyone's daughter.

So I did the only thing I could think of.

I stepped forward and took his hand off the door frame and held it.

His fingers were cold, and he held on.

"I need to get Lily," I said.

"Yes." He straightened.

Every bit of the weeping old man went somewhere deep, and what came back was the Saint.

"Come inside, and we'll get her."

The dining room had a table long enough for thirty.

A dozen men stood along the walls.

At the head sat a plate of untouched eggs, and next to it a glass of water nobody had drunk.

Giacomo did not sit.

He stood behind his chair with both hands on the back of it and waited.

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