Chapter 12: Coffee

Dominic did not finish his toast.

His mother leaned down and spoke into his ear, and I saw his face change from anger to a flat and obedient blankness.

"Take your father home," Assunta said aloud. "Paola, go with him. Now."

They went. All three of them, through the side door, without a backward look.

Dominic, who had never obeyed anyone, walked out of that hall like a boy sent to his room.

Assunta stood alone under the crucifix with the steel thermos in one hand.

Then she picked up my engagement ring from the white cloth and put it in her coat pocket.

She came down the steps and across the hall to the long table where I sat.

The hall had begun to hum again, low and wondering, with the candles guttering down the tables.

Tomo stood behind my chair with a hand on its back.

The oldest widow said something sharp in Croatian, and Assunta answered her with a bow of her head and a smile.

"I won't be long, signora," she said.

She stopped at the end of our table. She put the thermos down and unscrewed the cup.

She poured it full of black coffee and held it out to me.

"It's only coffee," she said. "I carried it all night on the boat so I would have something to do with my hands."

I did not take it.

She nodded as though she had expected that, and drank it herself.

Then she leaned across the white tablecloth, close enough that only we could hear, and she spoke in her gentle, careful voice.

"You can swim, can't you."

It was not a question.

Everything in the hall stopped, and everything in me moved at once.

She had offered the thermos to nobody on the boat.

She had told the cook to let the veal swim.

At the stern door, her eyes had been on me and not on her fallen daughter.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Don's Son Drowned Me, So I Came Back to Sink His Family from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.