He Denied Our Daughter, Now He Begs for Us novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: Forty-One Families
I put my sweater back on inside out and followed Santo into the front hall.
The gate stood open.
A crowd filled the drive, in work jackets and church coats, with children holding their mothers' hands.
A heavy woman at the front held a covered dish in both arms.
"Mr. Rinaldi," she said. "I'm sorry to come to your house. We didn't know where else to go."
"What is this?" Santo asked.
"The letter," she said. "It came this morning, signed by a man who said he spoke for you. It says the note on my husband's shop is paid in full."
Santo's consigliere stood at the end of the line with his hands folded.
He didn't look at either of us.
"I've paid on that note for five years," the woman said. "My husband sold the truck to keep up. My son left school to work the counter. And this morning it's gone."
"It's cancelled," Santo said quietly. "You owe nothing."
"Why?"
He took a long time to answer.
"My father lent your husband that money in the winter I was twenty-nine," he said. "I signed off on the sale of it. I didn't read the names."
Nobody in the drive moved.
"That was my fault, and I'm done collecting on it."
The woman pushed the dish into his hands.
"It's lasagna," she said. "It isn't enough."
"It's more than enough."
One by one, the others came up the drive.
An old man took Santo's hand and wouldn't let go.
A young father shook it, and his daughter held out a drawing of a house.
I stood in the doorway and watched a man I'd hated for two months try to take a stranger's lasagna with both hands full.
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