Chapter 11: Begging, Part Two

Santiago wanted to drive to Winnetka that night and take the house apart.

"No," I said.

"I won't touch anyone. I'll just ask."

"Your asking has four men and a gun in it."

"Three," he said. "One's on vacation."

We sat in the car outside the impound lot with the rain sheeting down the windows.

The blank blue card lay on the seat between us.

"My way," I said. "We agreed."

He breathed out slowly through his nose. Then he nodded.

"Your way," he said. "But your way is very slow."

It got slower.

October turned into November.

My father's lawyers sent a letter to the hospital saying I was mentally unwell.

The hospital sent it back.

Bella posted a photo of herself lighting a candle "for everyone touched by addiction."

Santiago walked the parallel bars four lengths, then five, then six, swearing less every week.

Then, on the second Sunday of November, Gino texted me.

"I have something of yours. Black. About the size of a stamp. Sunday dinner at my father's. Six o'clock. Come alone."

Santiago read it over my shoulder in the hotel gym.

"No," he said.

"It's his father's house. Old man Abbate doesn't let anyone bleed on his carpets."

"You're not going alone."

"I'm going alone. You're going to sit in the car at the curb with your three men and your terrible heart rate."

He looked at me a long moment.

"Text me every fifteen minutes," he said.

The Abbate house was in Elmwood Park, brick, with stone lions on the steps and a fig tree wrapped in burlap for the winter.

A man I recognized from the restaurant back room opened the door.

He patted me down in the front hall, hard, from my collar to my ankles.

"Sorry," he said, not sorry.

"Find anything?"

"A cheap phone and a bag of pretzels."

"Those are mine."

The dining room was full of aunts, uncles and cousins I'd met at our engagement party a year and a half ago.

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