Chapter 4: The Red Dress

His men emptied my mother's suitcase onto the dining table while we watched.

Three blouses, two skirts, a rosary and my father's old wristwatch.

At the bottom lay a black dress folded in tissue.

A guard ran a metal wand along every seam and the zipper.

It stayed silent.

"No weapons," he told Lorenzo. "No wire, nothing."

I picked up the dress.

A slip of paper had been tucked into the fold, in my mother's neat handwriting.

"Wear this one Friday," it said. "It's the one your father liked."

"Friday?" Lorenzo said.

"I don't know what's on Friday."

"I do." He nodded at a man by the door. "Your mother wrote to me this afternoon. She asked to make peace over a family dinner on Friday."

"And you said yes?"

"I said yes to all of you," he said. "I want to see how each of you lies at a table."

I folded the black dress back into the tissue.

It was soft and old, and it smelled of the cedar chest at home.

My throat closed for a moment, so I put it away fast.

"I'll wear it," I said.

"I'd like that," Lorenzo said, and I could not tell whether he meant it as a threat.

The next night he knocked on the east wing door himself.

"Get dressed," he said through the wood. "We're going out."

"I'm not allowed out of the house."

"You are tonight. With me."

I opened the door.

He stood there in a black suit with a white shirt and no tie.

His eyes went to my plain skirt and blouse and stayed there.

"That won't do," he said.

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