Chapter 9: His Daughter

"Because I'm his daughter," Gemma said.

Nobody breathed.

She said it to Dario's mother, quietly, with her hands flat on the table on either side of her plate.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm your husband's daughter."

"Gemma," Dario's father said. "Don't."

"I'm twenty-seven," she said, and her voice shook but did not stop. "I'm done being a secret, Dad."

Nobody at the table said a word.

Dario's mother did not move.

I had seen her stand over a hot stove without blinking and haul a thirty-pound turkey out of an oven barehanded.

She stood now with her serving spoon in her hand and stared at the girl she had just kissed.

"No," she said. "No. That's a joke."

"It isn't."

"My husband would have told me."

"He didn't."

She turned her head slowly and looked at the man at the head of the table.

He had put both hands over his face.

"Tell me," she said.

"Her mother was a mistake," he said into his palms. "A long time ago. Dario was a baby. It was one year. It was over before she was even born."

"Her name is Gemma," his wife said.

"I know her name."

"Do you? Because you have just called her someone else's."

He lowered his hands.

He looked old, suddenly, and smaller than the chair he sat in.

"Her mother," he said. "Her mother told me she'd go away. Then she died when Gemma was fifteen, and I couldn't turn her out, so I sent money."

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