Don's Regret Came Too Late novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: The Grave and the Piers

"Davide," I said.

Nonna Iannone didn't nod. She didn't have to.

"One more thing," she said. "He has a blue bird on the back of his right hand. A swallow. He was proud of it. He used to show it to my girls at the counter."

Then she patted my hand on the sill and got back in the sedan in her slippers.

I didn't keep her secret.

I called Leandro at seven in the morning and told him everything.

"My grandmother," he said finally. "Took a car service. At one in the morning. In her housecoat."

"And your coat."

"I wondered where that went." He breathed out. "Okay. I'll pick you up at noon."

"Leandro. Promise me something first."

"No promises until I see his face."

"Then I'm not getting in the car."

Another long silence.

"I won't touch him," he said. "Today."

At noon his car was outside the pharmacy. Not the black one his men drove. An old green sedan with a dented fender.

"It was my brother's," he said.

He didn't drive to Red Hook.

He drove to Green-Wood Cemetery, and parked under an oak, and got out without explaining.

I followed him up a little hill.

The headstone was small and gray. There was a cannoli on top of it, fresh, in a paper wrapper.

Twenty-four years. The dates were right there.

"My grandmother brings one every Sunday," he said. "The birds get it by Monday. She says he'd like that."

"What was he like?"

"Annoying." He crouched and brushed leaves off the base. "He sang while he worked. Badly. Opera. He'd hold the high notes until my grandfather threw flour at him."

I laughed.

He looked up at me from the grass, and for a second he looked as young as his brother.

"I come here before I do things," he said. "I tell him what I'm going to do. So he can stop me if it's stupid."

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