Chapter 21: The Five-Slot Box

On Saturday at noon, I stood on the front step of my building with my arms crossed.

I had not planned an audience.

But the man from 3A had set both of his folding chairs on the sidewalk.

The couple from 2B leaned on the railing with their coffee.

The graduate student in socks sat on the bottom step with a bowl of cereal.

"We're not here for you," the man from 3A said. "We're here to see how it goes."

"That's very comforting."

"Seth said you didn't need a bodyguard. He didn't say anything about witnesses."

Seth himself stood at the far end of the porch with his hands in his pockets.

I had asked him to be there and not to speak, and he had said yes.

A gray car pulled up at the curb.

The doors opened one at a time.

Dario got out first, in a plain jacket, and nodded to me without smiling.

Franco followed with no binder at all.

He kept his hands in his sleeves, because he had nothing to carry.

Lucia came last, in the cream coat, with tissues already in her fist.

Tommy walked around from the driver's side.

He held a flat white box tied with a green ribbon.

It was the size of a large book, and he carried it flat in both hands.

"Pao," he said.

"Stay at the bottom of the steps," I said. "All of you."

They stopped.

"We came to give you this," Tommy said. "It's what we should have done."

He took the lid off.

Inside, there were five slots lined with white paper.

In each lay a single chocolate, with a name piped across it in gold: DARIO, FRANCO, TOMMY, LUCIA.

And in the fifth, a little larger than the rest: PAOLA.

My throat tightened, and I let it.

Lucia began to cry in earnest.

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