The Godfather's Heartbroken Lover novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Court Street

I didn't go for Elettra.

I decided that on the Tuesday night before the wedding, sitting on my aunt's bathtub with the cream-and-gold card in my hand.

I went for a greasy notebook on a shelf above an oven.

I went for two hundred thousand dollars of flour and ovens and my mother's insurance.

And I went because I wanted to look Annunziata Corvino in the eye in her own church, in front of her own people, and not look away first.

Dora was already packed.

"I'm coming," she said from the sofa. "Don't argue. I want to see my mother's face. I've wanted to see it since I was nine."

"You don't have a ticket."

"You're buying me a ticket. I'll pay you back in loyalty."

At six in the morning I knocked on Konrad's door with my suitcase beside me.

He opened it in a T-shirt with his hair standing up on one side.

He looked at the suitcase.

He didn't look surprised.

"Brooklyn," he said.

"My bakery. My mother's book. That's all."

"That's not all."

"No," I said. "But that's what I'm going for."

He leaned on the door frame, the same door, and rubbed his eyes.

His daughter shouted from inside that if I was going to America I had to bring her a real yellow taxi.

"A small one," I called back.

"A big one!"

Konrad almost smiled.

"I'll come back," I said.

"I know you will. You owe her a horse cake." He looked at me for a long second. "Come back with an answer, Klara. Whatever it is. I can carry an answer."

I touched his hand on the door frame.

Then I picked up my suitcase and went down the stairs before I could say something unfair.

On Wednesday at noon I stood on Court Street in Carroll Gardens and looked at my own bakery.

ELETTRA'S, in gold script on black.

Through the glass, the case was full of pastries nobody had bought.

Across the street, the little old Saturday woman was still standing there with her cardboard sign.

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