Chapter 13: Twenty-Six Signatures

Franco picked a diner on Route 17 where nobody from Oakmont would see us.

It was six in the morning on move-in day, and the parking lot held two trucks and a bread van.

I got there first, with Nonna's letter in my pocket and the epinephrine pen in my bag.

Luca had wanted to drive me.

I had said no, and he had said, "Text me when you sit down, and text me when you leave."

I texted him from the booth.

Franco came in at ten past, in his work boots, with drywall dust still in his eyebrows.

He slid in across from me and looked at the menu without reading it.

"You came alone," he said.

"You asked me to."

"Dad doesn't know I'm here. He thinks I'm on the early crew."

The waitress poured him coffee, and he held the mug with both hands.

My brother had never been good at starting a sentence.

"Say it," I said. "Whatever it is."

He took a folded packet out of his jacket and set it on the table.

"It's the closing papers for the house. The real ones, not the pages Mom gave you."

I turned to the last page.

There were two signatures under BORROWER.

One was Dad's.

The other was Franco's, in the careful block letters he used for work forms.

"June eighth," Franco said. "Dad brought me a paper at the yard and said it was the refinance on my truck. He said sign where the yellow tab was."

"You didn't read it."

"I read the yellow tab."

His voice cracked on the last word, and he looked out the window at the bread van.

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