The Don's Wife Never Looks Back novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Gala Night
Mama's heart pump fails during the Corsi gala, Santino takes Mira's phone on his secretary's word, and Mama dies before Mira can reach her; at dawn Mira leaves the ring and walks out, and Livia admits she answered Mama's last call.
The clinic called at nine o'clock, in the middle of my husband's speech about children's hospitals.
I stepped behind a pillar and pressed the phone to my ear.
"Mrs. Corsi, it's the night doctor. Your mother's pump is failing."
The ballroom was clapping for Santino.
"She needs the university hospital within the hour. We need the payer's sign-off for the transfer. We've sent it to Mr. Corsi's office."
"I'll get it," I said. "Don't let her be scared."
I walked straight across the dance floor in my green silk gown.
Three hundred people watched me do it.
Santino was back at the head table with his hand on a glass of Barolo.
Livia sat at his elbow, where she always sat, with her tablet in her lap.
I bent to his ear.
"Mama's pump is failing. The clinic sent you a form. Sign it, please. Now."
He didn't turn his head.
"Again, Mira?"
"Santino. She's dying."
Livia leaned in on his other side and spoke softly.
"She asked me at lunch if I could invent an emergency so she could leave early. I told her I wouldn't."
I stared at her.
I had eaten lunch alone in the car.
"That's a lie," I said. "Look at me. Does this look like a game?"
Santino looked at me then.
He looked at my face, my shaking hands, and the gown he'd chosen for me.
Then he held out his palm.
"Phone."
"Santino, please."
"Phone, Mira. You're embarrassing me in front of the cardinal's people."
The women at our table had gone quiet over their crème brûlée.
I put the phone in his hand because I thought he'd use it.
He passed it to Livia without looking at it.
She slipped it into her clutch.
Santino lifted two fingers, and his driver came out of the shadows by the wall.
"Mrs. Corsi stays at the table until the last dance," Santino said. "She's tired. She gets ideas when she's tired."
The driver stood behind my chair.
I sat.
For three years, sitting was how I paid for Mama's heart.
The band played Sinatra.
Santino danced with the mayor's wife.
Livia came back from the ladies' room twice, and each time she smiled at me.
At eleven, I asked the driver if I could use the restroom.
He walked me there and stood outside the door.
At half past eleven, I asked a waiter for water, and the driver sent him away.
At eleven fifty, the band started the last slow song.
I stood up, lifted my hem, and walked into the kitchen doors.
The driver shouted my name.
I ran past the dish pit and the steam and a cook with a tray of tiramisu.
I came out in the loading dock in my heels and flagged a cab on Delaware.
I had no money.
I gave the driver my diamond earring for a twelve-dollar fare.
He took it.
I reached the clinic in Lakeview at twelve thirty-five.
Marisa was waiting at the nurses' station in her navy scrubs.
She didn't say anything.
She came around the desk and held both my arms.
"Twelve ten," she said. "I'm so sorry, Mira. I was with her."
The room was dim and quiet.
The pump was off.
Mama looked small in the bed, with three pins still stuck in the collar of her cardigan.
She always kept pins in her collar.
She said a seamstress without pins was just a lady.
I sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand until it was cold.
Marisa brought me a paper cup of tea I didn't drink.
"She kept asking for you," Marisa said. "At eleven forty she had me dial your cell."
I looked up.
"Somebody answered," Marisa said. "I heard a voice. Then your mom just held the phone and didn't say anything else."
"What voice?"
"A woman's. I couldn't hear the words."
I looked at Mama's hand.
Her nails were done in pale pink.
I'd painted them on Tuesday.
The form was never signed.
The transfer never came.
At five in the morning, I took a cab to Lake Forest with Marisa's twenty in my hand.
The guards at the gate let me through because I was still Mrs. Corsi.
The house was lit up.
Santino was in the front hall in his shirtsleeves, with his tie undone.
Livia was beside him with a coffee, wrapped in his cashmere throw.
The housekeeper was at the foot of the stairs.
"Where were you?" Santino said. "You made a fool of me in front of the whole city."
"My mother died at ten after twelve."
Nobody moved.
Livia set her coffee down very carefully.
Santino's jaw shifted. "Mira."
I pulled my wedding ring off my finger.
It stuck at the knuckle, and I twisted it until it came.
I put it on the marble hall table.
I put the house keys beside it, and the car fob, and the black card with his name on it.
"I'm going," I said.
"You don't have anywhere to go."
"I'll find somewhere."
"You have no money. No job. You have nothing that isn't mine."
"Then I'll have nothing."
I walked to the door in my green gown and my one earring.
Behind me, Santino said, "You'll be back in a week."
I didn't answer him.
Livia followed me to the door, as if she was seeing a guest out.
She held it open for me.
Her voice was so soft that only I could hear it.
"She called you at eleven forty," Livia said. "I answered."
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