Chapter 12: Dependable

I read Bianca's text four times in the dark, and I did not answer it.

Engaged. To the man who had read my letters and burned them, from the sister who had told me she was proud of me.

She didn't want me home to hear it first. She wanted to know where I was.

I went to Ettore before breakfast, with the purser's page copied out in my own hand.

He was in his study with the shutters half open. He looked up from a ledger, saw my face, and put his pen down.

"Close the door," he said.

I closed it. I told him all of it.

The jacket logged two hours before the fire.

The black phone in the arbor.

Her cab, my car behind it, the gas station, and the man with the burned ear.

I told him what my sister had said about the east wall and the feast.

He listened without moving. His hand lay on the ledger, and it didn't shake.

When I finished, he was quiet for so long that I heard the clock.

"You're certain of what you heard," he said.

"I'm certain."

"Your own sister."

"Yes."

"There's no proof of it. A page in a book. A phone nobody else has seen."

"A story told at dawn by a girl whose own suitor just fought with my son."

"I didn't lose Massimo. I handed back his ring."

"You did." Something flickered in his eyes, close to approval. "That's a different matter, and not the one in front of me."

He picked up the house phone and spoke briefly into it.

Five minutes later, Massimo and Bianca stood in the study.

Massimo's jaw was dark with stubble. He had slept in his clothes, and he kept his eyes off me.

Bianca wore the pale blue dress. She took my hand as she came in, and held it.

"Livia, you look exhausted," she said. "What's wrong?"

"Papa wants to ask you something," Massimo said.

"Do you own a second phone?" Ettore said to her.

Bianca blinked at him.

"A second phone. Black, small."

"I don't understand."

"Your sister says you were in the arbor with one two nights ago."

"She says you drove off at ten and met a man under the elevated tracks on 242nd Street."

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