Chapter 5: The Stand-In Pours the Wine

I stayed the week.

I told myself it was because he was shot, and because I wanted to know why a photograph of my face had made grown men fire guns.

On Sunday I walked into the lake house on his good arm, in a green dress with a high collar that hid the edge of his bandage.

The guard at the door took my phone.

I watched him drop it into the basket and thought: three years, and I never once asked why.

The long table was full.

Cousins, uncles and capos sat shoulder to shoulder, and every head turned as I came in.

Dario was on his feet before the door closed.

His eyes were wet.

"Come here, kiddo," he said, and he took my face in his hands and turned it toward the light.

He studied it for a long moment.

"The eyes," he said softly. "Even the little mark by the eyebrow. Your mother must have been a Pozzi, did you ever think?"

"My mother was from Palermo," I said.

"Of course. Of course she was." He let me go and patted my cheek. "Forgive an old man. Sit."

His ring was turned inward on his hand, the way it always was.

I sat.

Vincenzo took the head of the table.

For a while there was only the sound of forks.

Then the wife of Dario's son, a sharp-cheeked woman in a cream blouse, set down her glass.

"So this is who we're all so interested in," she said, and she looked me up and down. "The stand-in."

The table went very still.

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