I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don novel · Chapter 41 of 76

Chapter 41: The House He Was Born In

The old woman who opened the door of the house Pasquale was born in looked at me for a long time.

Then she said, in English, "You're the one who paid for his heart."

Damiano went still beside me with a suitcase in each hand.

Four days married, and I still flinched at that sentence.

I'd flown nine hours to get away from it.

"Yes," I said. "That's me."

She put down her broom.

She took my face in both hands, the way Pasquale had on his porch steps, and kissed both my cheeks hard.

"Then you're family," she said. "Come in. You're too thin. He wrote me you were too thin."

"He writes you?"

"Every Christmas. Sixty-five years." She looked at Damiano. "This one I know. I've had his school picture on my refrigerator since he had no front teeth."

Damiano put down the suitcases.

"I have front teeth," he said.

"One of them is broken," she said. "He wrote me that too."

The village sat on a hill above the sea, south of Catania.

The bus driver had to back up twice to make the last turn.

The lanes were too steep for cars.

The houses were the color of bread crust, with laundry between them and old men in the doorways.

Pasquale's house was on the lane under the church, with a green door and a stone step worn into a dip in the middle.

"His mother's feet," the old woman said, pointing at the dip. "And his. He ran out of this door every morning to sweep the shoemaker's floor. I lived there."

She pointed at the house across the lane.

"I was seven. He was six. He threw lemons at me."

"He still throws food," Damiano said.

She laughed so hard she had to hold the doorframe.

She lived downstairs now.

She'd made up the upstairs for us, she said, the way Pasquale asked in his letter, with the good sheets.

The room was whitewashed and cool, with a big iron bed, a tall wardrobe, and a washbasin on a stand.

Two green shutters stood open onto a terrace the size of a tablecloth.

There was a lemon tree in a clay pot, and beyond it, at the bottom of the hill, the sea.

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