Chapter 6: Thank You Cake

Tommaso Gallo lived in a stone house in Montclair with a lawn and a dining table long enough for twenty.

Tonight it was set for eight.

Bianca met us at the door in a cream silk dress and kissed me on both cheeks.

"You poor thing," she said. "You must be exhausted. Come sit by me."

Cesare's hand tightened on the small of my back.

"She sits by me," he said.

Bianca laughed, bright and quick.

At the table he took the chair on my left and moved my wine glass to his right without looking at anyone.

Tommaso saw it.

He only smiled.

The two captains were there, and their wives, and a priest who said grace in Italian and went home before dessert.

Gaspare's chair was empty.

Nobody mentioned him.

Tommaso rose before the soup was cleared and lifted his glass.

"Signori," he said. "Signora."

Then he began to talk, and the whole table leaned in.

He spoke for a long time.

I picked out nothing but my own name, and the word *coraggiosa*, which came up four times.

The captains' wives looked at me with bright wet eyes, and one of them pressed her hand to her heart.

When he finished, everybody drank, and the wives said things to me across the table in soft fast Italian.

I looked at Bianca.

"He says you're a hero," she whispered. "He says nobody has ever done what you did on that dock."

"All that?"

"Italians love a speech."

I turned to Cesare.

He lifted his glass to me, and his face was so calm that I wanted to hit him.

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