Chapter 19: Ask Me Later

Luca's POV

I caught Bianca's wrist before her hand came back for a second swing.

I did not squeeze it. I only held it.

"Let go," she said. "Let go of me. You'll leave a mark."

"You hit a fifty-eight-year-old woman in the face."

"She's a liar!"

"She's Valeria's mother," I said. "And she's been on the phone with Valeria for the last twenty minutes."

Bianca's eyes flew to the handbag.

Then she wrenched her arm out of my grip so hard that she stumbled against the dough table, and she ran.

She went through the back of the bakery and kicked open the alley door.

I took two steps after her.

"Luca," Valeria said.

She was kneeling on the floor beside her mother with Rosa's glasses in her hand.

I stopped.

I stood in the doorway to the alley and watched Bianca's white sneakers go around the corner of the building, and I let her go.

Rosa had a red handprint on her cheek, and she mattered more.

I went back and knelt on her other side.

"I'm fine," said Rosa. "I've been hit harder at the church sale."

"Mom, be quiet."

"I have it all on my phone, every word. The policeman will want that."

"The policeman can come to the house," said Valeria. "You're going home."

The officer came to the bakery forty minutes later.

He took Rosa's phone, wrote down the time stamps, and photographed her cheek.

Rosa told him what happened three times, and each time she told it a little louder.

When we finally walked her out to the Buick, she had a plate of cold bread wrapped in a towel under one arm, and she would not let go of it.

I drove her home.

Valeria sat in the back seat with her mother's head on her shoulder.

At the door of the little house on Dean Street, Rosa turned and took my face between her palms, flour and all.

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