Chapter 15: The Old Don

The old Don's bedroom smelled of camphor and candle wax.

It was at the top of the Brancato house, with a hospital bed set in front of the window.

Outside lay the roofs of Arthur Avenue.

He lay propped on four pillows with a clear tube under his nose.

He looked a hundred years old.

A nurse in a grey cardigan was folding towels by the door.

"Out," he said, without opening his eyes. "Close it behind you."

She went.

Rosalia was not in the house.

The driver had told us that on the stairs, in a low voice.

She was at the Brancato clinic, waiting for a patient who would never come.

"Come here, Keane girl," the old Don said.

I went to the side of the bed.

He turned his head on the pillow and looked at me out of black, wet, clear eyes.

"Ferrante. Sit." He lifted two fingers toward the chair by the wall. "I want to see you both at once."

Dominic sat.

"You knocked the cup out of her hand," the old Don said to me.

"Yes."

"Everyone at the table thought you were jealous. I thought, that girl has seen that cup before."

I said nothing.

"I'm seventy-nine. I haven't drunk what my daughter-in-law pours me in eleven years."

His breath whistled.

"I told myself she put sleeping drops in it. A man wants peace in his own house, Keane girl."

"And now?"

"After you broke it, I sent a boy with a clean cloth to soak up the marble."

He took a breath.

"I have a man at a lab in Hoboken who does not talk."

He closed his eyes for a moment.

"Not sleeping drops."

The room was very quiet.

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