Chapter 5: The Aunt's Kitchen

When the bag was full, the doctor taped a cotton ball to my arm and would not meet my eyes.

Fabiola was already sitting up, and a little pink had come back into her cheeks.

Rocco lifted her into the front seat of the Mercedes with both arms.

He did not say goodbye to me, and I didn't expect it.

The convoy turned around on the gravel and took its thirty men back down the hill.

I stood in the Ravello garden with my paper in my bra and my legs not working.

Stefano reached me before I fell.

He did not ask first.

He took my weight against his chest, put one arm under my knees, and carried me through the garden door.

"I can walk," I said into his coat.

"You said that on the bridge."

"I walked on the bridge."

"You did," he said. "You also grabbed my sleeve like a cat on a curtain."

I laughed.

It hurt my ribs, and I did it anyway.

He put me down in a deep chair in the kitchen.

The old woman had a bowl of soup waiting, and she put a spoon in my hand and stood over me until I ate.

"My aunt," Stefano said. "She raised me. Do what she says."

"Eat the bread too," his aunt said.

I ate the bread.

When I finished, Stefano knelt in front of the chair with a first aid box on his knee.

He turned my left arm over in his hands.

His fingers were warm and rough, and they moved over the bruise with more care than my husband had used on anything in nine years.

"This will sting," he said.

He dabbed something on the needle mark.

It stung.

I hissed, and my fingers closed around his wrist.

I was holding on to him again.

Under my thumb his pulse was going hard and fast.

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