Don's Regret Came Too Late novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Thursday Pills

Noemi tells her father the truth and finds the March prescription was called in from Davide's phone, and the rival Don at her counter says Vittorio killed his brother over a bullet his family never fired.

I hung up before he could breathe.

Then I turned the phone off completely and pushed through the pharmacy door.

The bell jingled. The tech was restocking cough syrup.

Papa was behind the counter with his reading glasses on his head and another pair on his nose.

"You're late," he said. "You're never late."

"Can we go upstairs?"

He looked at my sweater, still inside out.

He took off both pairs of glasses and told the tech to watch the register.

Upstairs, I sat him at the kitchen table where my mother used to pin hems.

I put the printout in front of him.

He picked it up and held it close, then far, then close again.

"Nine weeks," I said. "It's Vittorio's. He doesn't know. He thinks I got rid of it."

Papa set the paper down very gently.

Then he put both hands over his face and cried.

I'd seen him cry twice in my life. At my mother's funeral, and at my wedding.

"Papa. It's okay."

"Five years." His voice came out wet through his fingers. "Your mother lit a candle every Sunday. Five years of candles."

I came around the table and put my arms around his neck from behind.

He smelled like Old Spice and the cough drops he stole from his own shelves.

"I'm not going back to him," I said.

He wiped his face with a dish towel.

"Good."

Then he stood up, washed his hands, and took out the big pot.

"It's Monday," I said.

"So?"

"You only make sauce on Sunday."

"You're eating for two. Monday is Sunday now."

He browned the sausage, and for once the smell didn't make me sick.

I left him singing Sinatra badly at the stove and went down to the computer in the back office.

Every prescription we've filled since 1998 is in that system.

Before that, there are boxes in the stockroom.

I typed S. CORSETTI.

The March 4 fill came up in Papa's initials.

Progesterone, 200 milligrams, thirty capsules. Pregnancy support.

It was a phone-in. The doctor's office had called it in, supposedly.

Phone-ins get a callback number on the record, in case we have a question.

The callback number wasn't a doctor's office.

I knew it.

It was in my own phone under D.

Davide Spada's cell.

I printed the record. Then I photographed it, then the screen, then the paper hard copy in the March binder.

My heart was hammering so hard the camera shook.

On March 4, Vittorio hadn't been anywhere near a clinic.

On March 4, Davide Spada had been calling in Silvia's pregnancy pills.

I didn't tell Papa yet.

I needed him to keep his face normal at the register, and Papa had never had a normal face in his life.

The week went by in counting.

Pills. Days. Weeks since March.

Silvia posted a sunset on Tuesday and a crib on Wednesday.

Vittorio sent eleven texts. I read none of them.

Thursday at four the bell over the door rang, and I knew who it was before I looked up.

Every Thursday for four years, at four o'clock.

Leandro Iannone, Don of Bensonhurst, picking up his grandmother's heart pills himself.

He had to duck a little under the bell.

He was the biggest man who ever came into our store, and the quietest.

Black wool coat, even in July. Gray sweater. Dark hair that needed a cut a year ago.

The Corsetti women in line went very still.

He didn't look at them.

He looked at me.

"Mrs. Corsetti."

"Mr. Iannone."

I rang up Nonna's bottle. I knew the number by heart.

He tapped the counter with one finger. There was an old white scar across his thumb.

"I saw a post," he said. "Someone put a question mark under it."

"People post all kinds of things."

"They say the question mark is living above her father's pharmacy now."

"They say a lot of things in Bensonhurst."

"They say a lot of things in Carroll Gardens too. Mostly about me." He took his change. "None of it nice."

"Is it true?"

"Some of it. I'm told I'm very bad at bocce."

I laughed before I could stop it.

It was the first time I'd laughed since Saturday. It came out strange and rusty.

His gray-green eyes moved over my face.

"Your grandmother's due for a refill on the twenty-fourth," I said. "Tell her not to skip the evening dose. I know she skips it."

"She says it makes her dream about my grandfather."

"Is that bad?"

"He was a terrible man. Very handsome." He tucked the bag inside his coat. "She likes the dreams. She just doesn't like to admit it."

He turned for the door.

Then he turned back, and his voice dropped so only I could hear it.

"Mrs. Corsetti. I'm sorry about the soup."

"You heard about the soup?"

"All of Brooklyn heard about the soup." Something moved at the corner of his mouth. "It was the best thing that's happened on this street in three years."

The women in line stared at their shoes.

I leaned across the counter.

"Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask."

"The night Emilio Corsetti died. Who really did it?"

The almost-smile went out of his face.

He put both big hands flat on my counter.

"Your husband," he said quietly, "killed my brother over a bullet my family never fired."

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