They Spoke Sicilian Over My Head, So I Called My Don Grandfather novel · Chapter 19 of 24
Chapter 19: The Knives on the Cloth
Carmine let the silence last until it was uncomfortable.
"Gentlemen," he said. "Ladies. Nobody leaves yet."
The bolt had shot from outside, so he had men in the corridor.
Along the far wall, a few of the old heads looked at the doors, and then at each other.
"Carmine," said the oldest of them, a stooped man from the Naples side with a bent, spotted hand. "What is this?"
"A courtesy. I have a message for the room, and I want it heard before anyone goes home and tells it wrong."
"Mr. Cammarata," said Massimo, from beside me. "My men are in the corridor behind yours. Open the door."
"In a minute."
"Now."
"In a minute," said Carmine, "because I promised the girl something."
He turned and looked at me down the length of the dais.
"Miss Ruggieri. I told you I would give you your mother's message at the table, with all of them watching."
My mouth was dry.
"Say it."
Carmine took a breath, and for the first time in my life I saw him hesitate.
"Your mother was holding the foot of the kitchen stairs," he said, in Sicilian, pitched for the back wall. "It was an hour, and I was not kind. At the end of it she looked at me and said one thing to give to her daughter, if ever I found her."
The room was very still.
"She said, 'Tell her I did not look at the stairs. Tell her she is not to look back.'"
I could not speak.
Beside me my grandfather made a small sound, and put his hand on his mouth.
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