Chapter 23: One Plain Answer

The visiting room smelled of floor polish and boiled cabbage.

There were six tables, bolted down, and a guard by the door.

Ilaria Montanari sat at the third table in a grey prison sweater.

Her hair was tied back with a rubber band.

I had never seen her without silk, or without her pearls.

She looked about fifteen.

I sat down across from her and put a paper bag on the table.

"Teresa's bread," I said. "The guard has checked it."

She looked at the bag and did not touch it.

"You came," she said.

"You asked."

"I didn't think you would."

"I said I would."

The guard coughed, and the room went quiet again.

Ilaria folded her hands on the table.

They were thinner than I remembered.

"Do you know what the lawyer says?" she said. "A year. Maybe two."

"The maid will not testify against me, he says. She asked them to be kind."

"I know. I sat with her at the station."

"Why?"

"She's twenty. She was scared."

Ilaria's mouth twisted.

"You are still doing it. Being good. It's exhausting to watch."

"I'm not being good. I'm telling you what happened."

She looked at the table.

"I wanted one conversation," she said.

"I wanted to say a thing to you. I've been saying it in my head for five years."

"Say it."

"He'll do it to you." She did not look up.

"Alessio. He'll go quiet. He'll say let it go."

"One day you'll be in a room with someone cruel, and he'll turn his back."

"And you'll find yourself saying it too."

I let it land.

It was the cruelest thing she had left, and it was also true.

"He might," I said.

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Won't Bridge an Impossible Gap from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.