Chapter 6: The Bruise

Sixty neighbors turned from Lidia's face to mine.

"I haven't seen you since last night," I said. "At nine o'clock tonight I was in my father's cellar with seven captains and a steel door."

"You did it at the dinner," Lidia said, and the tears ran. "After. In the hall. Dario saw."

Dario put an arm around her shoulders.

"I saw it," he said. "My wife hit the mother of my child because I told her the truth."

"Gemma wouldn't," the baker said, from the sidewalk.

Dario did not look at her.

"Everyone's shocked," he said. "I understand. She has been unwell for a long time."

Unwell.

He had said it so many times that for three years I had said it to myself in the mirror.

Nino stepped forward on his bad knee.

"At the dinner I walked out behind Alberto's daughter," he said. "She never touched anyone. Seven men went with her."

"You'd say that," Dario said. "She pays you."

"With whose money?" Nino said.

Some of the old men nodded.

Lidia pressed her sleeve to her face and wiped her tears.

When she lowered her arm, there was a long purple smear across the cream cuff.

It was exactly the color of the bruise on her cheek.

The bruise itself was thinner now. A pale patch of skin showed through it, shaped like the edge of a thumb.

The firefighter beside us looked at it.

"Ma'am," he said slowly. "Your face is coming off on your jacket."

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