Chapter 15: Tommaso Turns

"Where did you get the note?" Ruggero asked.

"Off the walnut, after everyone left," Tommaso said. "Nobody noticed. Bianca had already gone."

He spread the brown sheet on the hall table and took a soft pencil out of his sweater pocket.

"My teacher showed me this when I was nine. You rub the lead flat across the back, and it shows what was pressed through from the front."

He rubbed.

White lines came up through the gray.

I bent over it with Ruggero at my shoulder.

Under the faint curve of my own handwriting, in a different hand, one sentence had been pressed into the paper again and again.

I am going away with someone who loves me.

It was written over and over down the page.

The last few were nearly mine, and the first ones were not.

"She practiced," I said.

"That's her slant," Tommaso said, and touched the first line.

"Look at the capital I. She puts a bar through it."

"Does she?"

"On every seating card she writes."

"I set the table with those cards for twelve years."

His voice cracked on the last word.

He took off his glasses and pressed his fingers into his eyes.

I put my hand on his wet sleeve.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry, Mom."

"Come here."

He came, tall and soaking, and put his forehead on my shoulder like he had at six.

Behind him, the front door opened and shut.

Dario stood in the hall in his black blazer, with rain running off his hair.