Chapter 10: Gravy on a Wednesday

I looked down at his soft pink hand on my sleeve.

"Then I guess I'll have to stay alive on my own, Augie."

He laughed, delighted.

"That's the spirit, sweetheart."

I didn't tell Dom.

I told myself it was because he was tired.

On Monday I could have left.

I could have moved back above the clinic and filed again, and not one old man in Kansas City could have said a word.

Every morning that week he made eggs and looked up when I came into the kitchen, like he was checking whether I was still there.

I was.

On Wednesday night we made Nonna's Sunday gravy.

On a Wednesday, which Nonna said on the phone was a sin against God and the Virgin.

"Pork neck bones," she told me, on speaker, propped against the sugar jar. "Not ribs. If he uses ribs I'll know."

"He's using neck bones, Nonna."

"Tell him to brown them until they're ugly. He always takes them out too soon."

Dom, at the stove with his sleeves rolled up, said, "I can hear you, Signora."

"Good," said Nonna, and hung up.

We cooked for four hours.

He browned the bones until they were ugly.

I crushed the tomatoes with my hands, the way she taught me, and he watched my hands the whole time.

Carmela texted me a photo of a sticky note.

DOM'S BEDROOM DOOR. POOL NOW $340. 5TH ST SAYS SATURDAY.

"Who was that?"

"Nobody."

"Your cousin." He tasted the sauce off a wooden spoon. "I heard about the pool."

I put my face in my tomato hands. "Oh my God."

"I have twenty dollars on Sunday," he said, perfectly serious, and I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the floor.

He told me about his brother, the little one laughing on the dock in the photo in his drawer.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Married to My Ex-Father-in-Law from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.