Chapter 13: Sister

Nerina walked into the room.

She sat on the foot of my bed with her robe tucked around her knees.

She looked at Rosa asleep in the crib, and then at the man standing beside it.

"Don't look so sick, Ruggero," she said. "I've known for four years."

His hands closed at his sides.

"Nerina."

"I turned eighteen, and I volunteered at a nursing home in Queens, because Mari said it would look good on a form."

Her eyes slid to me.

"One of the old men there had driven for the Salernos. He was dying, and he wanted somebody to forgive him."

"What did he tell you?" I asked.

"Everything. The road, the car, who sat behind the wheel, and whose word it was."

She smiled at me.

"I forgave him. It was easy. He wasn't the one who owed me."

The monitor hissed in the quiet.

"Four years," Ruggero said. "You never said a word."

"I didn't need to. I only needed to ask for things."

She said it gently, the way she said everything.

"A ride at two in the morning. A birthday dinner. A date on the calendar. You came every time."

"I came because I owed you."

"I know. That's why it worked."

I felt cold from my scalp to my heels.

Every panic attack I had ever sat through at that girl's bedside went by in my head, one after another.

"The wedding," I said.

"I picked the ninth in January. I told him I was ready for him to be happy." She tilted her head. "I wanted to see him choose."

"You staged a crash."

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