Exiled for Saying No, I Came Back and Took the Boss's Chair novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: The Second Plate
On Friday night Nonna and I peeled garlic at the kitchen table until ten.
The aunts had gone home to their own beds.
The house was quiet except for the clock over the stove and the little red vigil lamp by my father's photograph.
"Tell me about the night of the train," I said.
Nonna's knife did not slow down.
"What do you want to know?"
"Who was in this kitchen."
"Your father. Ignazio." She split a clove. "Your father came in at nine with the face of a man who had been told something terrible."
"Told by who?"
"By his brother. Ignazio sat up with him until dawn. I went to bed."
She dropped the clove in the bowl.
"In the morning your father's eyes were red, and he said the girl is gone, and nobody says her name in this house."
I put down my knife.
"Did he tell you what Ignazio said?"
"He told me nothing," Nonna said. "He had never told me anything in his life."
She got up and put the bowl on the counter.
"Go to bed, Carlotta."
I did not go to bed.
I sat in the dark kitchen with the vigil lamp until a knock came at the back door at a quarter to twelve.
Ronan stood on the step with a foil package in each hand.
"Friday order," he said, low. "The driver wouldn't come. I thought you'd rather not eat it cold."
I took him by the sleeve and pulled him inside and shut the door.
I turned on the little lamp over the stove and no other light.
He set the packages on the counter and peeled back the foil.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of Exiled for Saying No, I Came Back and Took the Boss's Chair are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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