The Pawn novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Any Lab You Like

The lab was on the ninth floor of a glass building on Michigan Avenue.

I took the test with both of them in the waiting room.

They sat on opposite walls, a man in a black suit and a man in a gray cardigan, and neither one looked at the other.

I had slept in a hotel room Rocco paid for, with a Ruvolo guard at my door and a Pellegrino guard at the elevator.

Neither had been allowed to knock.

The nurse swabbed the inside of my cheek and then Pellegrino's.

"Results by tomorrow afternoon," she said, and sealed the tubes.

Pellegrino stood and held out his arm to me.

I did not take it.

"My home is a two hour drive," he said. "Your mother's things are there."

"She left a box in the summer house, and I never let anyone touch it."

"Come for a day, Nerina. See where she was happy."

"And then?"

"And then you may go wherever you like. I give you my word."

I looked past him.

Cosimo had stood up and was watching me with his hands at his sides.

He had not shaved.

He looked like a man who had spent the night in a chair, which he had.

I thought about the flat over the bakery, and the couch, and the arm he had put under my head.

I thought about a voice on a phone in a gray van, saying like you asked.

Somebody in Cosimo's world had talked to Pellegrino before the wedding.

Somebody had sold the church.

I would not find out who from inside Cosimo's flat.

"I'll go for a day," I said.

Pellegrino smiled, and it was a soft, happy thing, and I hated how much I wanted to smile back.

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