Chapter 22: Her Mother's Table

Ilaria's POV

I walked up the hill through the wet grass and stopped at my mother's grave, a pace from my husband.

Nico took one look at my face and found somewhere else to be.

"I watched you for ten minutes," I said.

"I know."

"You said you were at the club books."

"I lied." Dominic didn't try to dress it up. "It was the second one. I left a note and I went."

"Why are you here?"

"To say something to your mother that wasn't mine to say through you."

He didn't tell me what.

I looked at his wet knees and his red-rimmed eyes and the mud on his hands.

I had a hundred sharp things ready, and I let them go.

"You get no forgiveness today," I said.

"I'm not asking for it."

"You get a seat at my table. And you get one more rule."

"Tell me."

"You don't leave notes on pillows. If you need to go somewhere, you wake me up and you say it to my face."

His voice shook when he answered.

"Yes."

"And whatever you came here to say that you won't tell me," I said, "you'll tell me when it's time. Not before."

He looked at me, and I saw him decide to trust that I knew.

"Yes, Donna."

"Don't call me that in front of my mother."

His mouth almost smiled.

That night my mother's kitchen smelled of butter and nutmeg for the first time in a month.

I made the gnocchi from her real book, the one in her own handwriting.

I had once pretended to find it at a market.

The old housekeeper cried into her apron and then told me I was using too much flour.

Nico sat at the long table with his arm in its sling and a fork in his good hand.

"Tell my mother I was brave," he said, looking mournfully at his plate.

"Your mother is coming for dinner tomorrow," I said. "Tell her yourself."

"She'll say I was stupid."

"She'll be right," said Aurelio, from the end of the table.

He had put down his cane for the first time since I'd known him.

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