Chapter 29: The Name on the Steps

Gemma's POV

My mother had reached the corner of Court Street before Nunzio's father stepped in front of her.

He did not touch her.

He simply stood on the pavement in his grey suit, a heavy man in the lamplight, and she stopped.

I came down the side street with the Saint's Lamp in my hands and half the parish behind me.

"Donatella," he said. "You'll want to go back."

"I'm going to my car."

"Your car is gone. The Albano driver left when the shot went off."

She looked past him at the empty curb, at the black rectangle of road where the car had been meant to wait.

For a moment I saw her calculate it.

Then she turned and saw the crowd, three hundred of them with candles, standing in a ring in the snow.

"Mother," I said. "The steps."

"I don't take instructions from a child."

"Then walk with me."

I held out my arm.

She looked at it for a long time, and then she took it, because there was nowhere left to go.

We climbed back up to the church together, her hand light and cold on my sleeve, and the parish opened for us.

At the top I set the lamp on the stone.

Nunzio waited by the bell rope.

He had taken off his gold watch and was holding it in his fist.

"Signora Rossetti," he said. "Good evening."

"Nunzio, dear."

"My father tells me you own forty percent of my trucks."

Nobody in the street made a sound.

"Your father is confused," my mother said.

"He showed me the ledger this morning. The page is in a clerk's hand. Your name is at the top."

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