Chapter 8: Nobody Gives You Anything Here

Nora's POV

They let me out on the eleventh day, with a bag of pills and a list of rules.

Fiorenza had the stove going before I got through the door.

"Sit," she said, and I sat.

"I can help with the potatoes."

"You can sit." She put a ball of dough in front of me, and a knife. "You can cut that."

I cut gnocchi at her kitchen table for an hour, badly.

She corrected my hands twice and said nothing else, and the kitchen smelled of nutmeg and warm flour.

"The Morettis fed you?" she asked at last.

"They fed me."

"Out of kindness, I'm told."

I stopped with the knife in the dough.

"Antonella said that at the reception," Fiorenza said. "I wasn't deaf. I was angry."

"It's what she always said. Everything was a kindness."

"Listen to me." She put down her rolling pin. "Nobody in this house gives you anything out of kindness."

I looked up.

"We want you here," Fiorenza said. "It's a different thing, and when you've got the hang of it you'll stop washing my plates."

I had to look down at the dough.

"Cut," she said, gruffly, and went to stir the sauce.

That night my hair started coming out in my hands.

I stood in the bathroom with a brush full of it, and I didn't cry.

I had cried enough that month.

When I came out Matteo was in the hall, and he saw the brush before I could hide it.

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