The Capo's Daughter Needs No Permission novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: A Slip for Nothing
I booked the cruise in December, on my own card, at the table in my room over the garage.
Seven nights, Miami to the Caribbean and back, a balcony cabin for two.
I paid with money I had earned in the Westbridge security lab and with a refund from my grandmother's account that Bianca had wired back to the dollar, with no note.
Nico sat across from me with his chin on his fist.
"You know I've never been on a ship," he said.
"Neither have I."
"What if I throw up?"
"Then I'll hold your hair," I said. "You have plenty."
Before we left, I drove to Newark one last time.
My mother was in the big kitchen with a coffee cup in one hand and nothing in the other.
The house felt different. My father had moved to a small place by the river. Franco was in the den with the door open, going through books with a pencil.
"Livia," my mother said, and put the cup down too hard.
"I brought you something."
I took the steel box out of my bag.
Seventy-five slips lay in it, each one stamped in the corner with the black seal that was now ash in a brazier.
I picked up one and a pen.
Under the stamp, where the line for the reason used to be, I wrote: Come see me. I'll make the coffee.
I turned it over and wrote on the back: Good for any day, for any reason, or for no reason at all.
Then, in the corner where my father used to sign, I signed my own name.
I held it out.
My mother looked at it for a long time.
She didn't take it.
"I can't take this," she said. "I haven't earned it."
"That's why it doesn't say what it costs," I said. "It costs nothing, Mom."
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