Chapter 14: Nothing Between Us

Santino put a folded paper on my father's dining table that night and did not sit down.

Nino had gone home with his bad knee and a bottle of anisette.

The house was quiet, and the recorder lay between us with its little red light off.

We had played it three times in the truck, and Lidia's voice said ten past four every time.

"She knew the hour," I said. "Nobody told her it mattered."

"And whoever wrote Tonight in that margin knew it first," Santino said.

"Then one of them is still out there."

"Maybe. Read this before we chase him."

It was a deed, typed and notarized, and my name was on the second line.

Gemma Sartori.

"Half the yard," I said. "Half the gate, the cranes, the forty-one crews."

"Half."

"You don't hand over half a port for nothing."

"I'm not asking for the vote anymore. Or the seat. Tear up the ninety days if you want."

I pushed the paper back across the wood.

My hand was not steady, and I hated that he could see it.

"Everyone wants something," I said. "You wanted a seat at the table, and I was the way to it. I'm the weapon you couldn't get from anyone else."

His face did not change.

"Is that what you think?"

"I think nothing between us was the best rule I ever made. Keep your hands where I told you, Santino."

He looked at the deed, and then at me, and he laughed once, softly, without any joy.

"Dario kept me on a dock for six years," he said. "I could have used anyone to climb off it. I could have walked into any captain's house."

"You walked into mine."

"I walked into yours with your suitcases."

He stepped around the table.

"I watched you for three years from the back wall, and I never once wanted anything from you but this."

"But what?"

"You, looking at me when I come into a room."

The house ticked around us.

My throat was tight.

"You didn't tell me about the photographs," I said.

"No."

"I'm still angry."

"Stay angry," he said. "Be angry in the same room with me."

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