Chapter 17: What Silvia Brought

My mother's kitchen light was on when the car pulled in at two in the morning.

Cassio stopped at the edge of the gravel and turned off the engine.

"I'm not on your docks," he said. "I'm in your yard. I'll wait here."

"You don't have to."

"I know. Go."

Fabio opened the kitchen door before I knocked.

Silvia stood in the middle of the room in a wet raincoat with her arms wrapped around her own ribs.

My mother sat at the table with her hands folded.

She had made tea, and she had not offered any.

"Sit," my mother said to me.

I sat.

"She hasn't told me anything yet," my mother said. "I wanted you here to hear it."

Silvia looked at me.

Her cheek still had a faint mark where I had hit her.

"I thought he loved me," she said.

Nobody answered.

"Lugano was his idea," she said. "Last winter he told me the engagement was business and he'd never loved Vivi."

"He said that to you?" I asked.

"He said it, and I wanted it so badly I believed him."

She swallowed.

"So I showed him the paper your mother signed. I said I'd never ask your family for money. I'd ask for him."

"And he said yes."

"He said yes in about a minute. I thought that meant something."

My mother poured one cup of tea and slid it across the table toward Silvia's side.

Silvia didn't touch it.

"The baby came three weeks ago," she said. "Last week Edoardo's lawyer sat me down in the villa and read the paper aloud."

"It says anything the Lanzetta house can give," I said.

"It doesn't say a share of the docks," my mother said.

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