Chapter 12: March Ninth

I called Ettore from the bathroom with the tap running.

He answered on the first ring.

"Santa Rosalia," I said. "He's headed there now."

"I'm already outside your gate," he said. "Come out the laundry window again."

"You said not alone."

"I'm not letting you go alone."

By the time we reached the cemetery, the Alfa stood by the iron gates with its door open and its lights off.

The gate had been left unlocked.

Ettore took my hand, and we went in along the wall where the hedges were thick.

A thin snow had started to fall.

It settled on the stones and on the rows of black yews and made no sound.

At the far end, under a bare tree, I saw a lantern.

Two figures stood in front of a double grave.

One was my husband, bareheaded in his dark overcoat.

The other wore a long grey coat with the hood pushed back, and her auburn hair was loose on her shoulders.

Mirella.

She was holding the lantern, and she looked perfectly well.

Ettore pulled me down behind a marble angel twenty feet away.

From there I could read the stone.

It said Santoro, a husband and a wife, and under it the ninth of March, fifteen years ago.

"Say it," Mirella said.

Dario's voice was low and rough.

"I was twenty-one."

"Say what you did."

"My father sent me to Bensonhurst with two men. He told me it was a debt. Your father owed us money and would not pay."

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