The Daughter They Erased Came Back Untouchable novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Long Table

At a family dinner Nerina refuses to sign and tells the true story of the staircase; her father answers by ordering a doctor and two assistants to collect her at seven, and she calls the notary.

Dinner was served at eight, at the long table where Nonna used to sit at the head.

Her chair was empty now, and nobody had taken it.

My father sat at the other end.

My aunt and my uncle sat on his right, my father's sister and her husband, both in their best evening clothes.

They had come to see me.

I had been put in the middle, between Gaetano and an empty place, with Fiammetta across from me staring at her soup.

For three courses nobody said my name.

Then the plates were cleared, and my father folded his napkin.

"Nerina," he said. "You have read what I left for you."

Every fork in the room went still.

"I read it," I said.

"And you'll sign it before Friday."

"I'll sign nothing until my own notary has read it."

My uncle laughed out loud.

"Your own notary? Brother, the girl has been home for six hours and she wants a lawyer for the deed her own father wrote."

"I'm sixteen," I said. "I would like someone to read it who isn't related to me."

"She's afraid of her family," my aunt said, and she shook her head sadly at her wine. "After what she did, I suppose I understand it."

I put down my spoon.

"After what I did."

"We don't need to go through it again," Ugo said.

"No, let's," I said. "Please. Everyone is here."

My father said nothing.

He had always known how to let a silence do the cruel work for him.

"You pushed a child down a marble staircase," my uncle said into the quiet. "Your own sister. She broke her arm and could have broken her neck."

"I was twelve," I said.

"Twelve is old enough to know better."

"Yes, it is."

I stood up.

My chair scraped, and Gaetano flinched beside me.

"Twelve is old enough to know what you saw," I said. "I was on that stair, and the housekeeper had just mopped it. Fiammetta slipped on the wet stone, and I caught her sleeve."

The room had become very quiet.

"I held her sleeve," I said. "It tore. That is the whole thing I did."

"That is not what happened," my father said.

His voice was mild and pleasant.

"It is exactly what happened."

"We have Fiammetta's word."

"You have what she said in the hospital the second night," I said, "after you spoke to her alone."

Across the table my sister's spoon rattled against her bowl.

It was the first sound she had made all night.

My father turned his head toward her very slowly.

"Fiammetta," he said. "Tell your sister what you told me."

I watched her.

I saw her throat move, and her hand go up to the little silver medal and close around it.

Her lips parted.

"I," she said.

Her glass tipped over, and red wine ran across the white cloth toward my father's plate.

"Forgive me," she whispered. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

She did not say for what.

A maid darted in with a towel, and my aunt made a small pleased sound in her throat.

"There," she said. "You see how the poor girl still shakes."

My father had not moved.

"Sit down, Nerina."

I stayed standing.

"I won't sign tonight," I said. "I won't sign on Friday without a notary who isn't yours. And I won't be called a girl who pushed her sister at a table where my sister cannot say it herself."

My uncle struck the table with his open hand.

"You see?" he said. "Violent. In her father's own dining room."

"Enough," said my father.

He rose.

He was a tall man, and the candles made his shadow long on the wall behind him.

"Nerina is tired," he said. "She has had a long journey and a great shock. It would be unkind to ask more of her tonight."

He sounded warm, and the staff at the sideboard lowered their eyes.

It was the voice he had used when he told me I was going away.

"I will arrange for a doctor to see her in the morning," he said. "A girl who stands and accuses her family at dinner should be looked at by someone who knows how."

"A doctor," I said.

"Seven o'clock. He will bring two assistants, in case you are upset."

My aunt put her hand over her mouth, but I saw her smile behind it.

I looked at Ugo.

He looked at his plate.

I looked at Gaetano, who found something fascinating about the tablecloth.

I looked at Fiammetta, white as the cloth, her eyes full, shaking her head very slightly at nobody.

"Goodnight, Papa," I said.

I picked up my napkin, folded it, and laid it on my chair.

Then I walked out of the dining room with my back straight.

Nobody followed me.

On the stairs I took the phone from my coat pocket, where I had kept it switched off since Switzerland.

It had one number saved.

I looked at the clock above the landing.

It was ten past ten.

At seven o'clock two strangers would walk into my room and call it a checkup.

I dialed the notary.

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