Chapter 11: The Real Test

The doctor said pancreatic cancer, stage four, and that my father had known for at least eight months.

He said it in the corridor outside the intensive care unit, in a tired, careful voice.

I stood against the wall with flour still on my sleeves.

"Eight months," I said.

"He told us not to call you."

"Of course he did."

The doctor squeezed my arm and left me there.

Teo was sitting on a plastic chair at the far end of the corridor.

He had followed the ambulance in his truck.

He didn't come over.

He held a paper cup of coffee in both hands.

He looked at me across thirty feet of linoleum.

I walked into my father's room and shut the door.

He lay propped on three pillows, thin and gray, with a tube in his nose.

His eyes opened when I sat down.

"Cara."

"You should have told me."

"I'm telling you now."

His voice was a thread.

"I came to the bakery to say it, and my legs wouldn't carry me."

"Say what?"

"The test."

I leaned in.

"I made it twenty years ago, when you were seven," he said.

"Your mother and I knew what men want from a Don's daughter. Money. A way in."

"Papa."

"Let me."

"A man comes into the cellar and I sit in the dark and talk about my daughter."

"A hooded man is tied in the chair, a drunk I pay five hundred dollars, and a gun lies on the table."

"The gun is empty. A man who points it at the drunk is only a man who does what he's told."

"And the ones who don't?"

"The ones I want turn it on me."

His eyes were bright.

"A man who would aim at your father for you would aim at anyone. That's the man I wanted at your side when I was gone."

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