Chapter 4: The Second Verse

She started to close the door.

I put my foot in it.

I was wearing hospital socks under Benedetta's sneakers, and the heavy oak crushed my toes, and I didn't move.

"Ow," Carlotta said, as if it were her foot. "Are you insane? Get off my step."

"It isn't your step."

Behind me Benedetta was coming up the stairs with the diaper bag.

"Carlotta, hi, congrats again, beautiful wedding," she said, in a voice that meant the opposite.

Carlotta's eyes flicked from her to me and narrowed.

"Oh my God. You're the bakery girl."

So she knew who I was.

"Uncle Ruggero said you might try something," she said. "He said you were sad. You do look sad."

"Move."

"Or what? You'll throw a cannoli at me?"

I shouldered the door.

I was fifteen hours out of labor with a baby on my chest.

I still shoved it hard enough that she stumbled back against a marble table.

A vase of last night's red roses went over.

"Nonna!" Carlotta shrieked up the stairs. "Nonna, there's a crazy woman in the house!"

A voice answered from a room off the hall.

"Bring her in."

Carlotta's face did something ugly and fast.

The room was a library with the curtains half drawn and a fire going in October.

A tiny woman sat in a green wing chair by the fire.

She wore black silk to the wrists, and her white hair was pulled into a bun so tight it looked painful.

A clear tube ran from her nose to a tank on wheels.

A silver-topped cane leaned against the arm of the chair.

On her right hand was an emerald the size of a thumbnail.

Behind her stood a big old man with a white mustache, his hands folded in front of him.

Donna Ludovica Morra looked at me.

She looked at the babies.

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