Chapter 5 Caterina
CATERINA
I wake to the smell of lemon oil and candle smoke that isn’t there. Sun sneaks through the blinds, striping my sheets just like light does through slats in the confessional.
My body remembers before my mind catches up—it’s tender where a new awareness is, warm where his touch taught me a map. I can still feel the mesh pressed into my palm, the veil sliding crooked, the rosary tapping against our arms.
Sanctuary on my tongue like a key I learned to turn.
I gave that little bit of flesh away because I wanted to—because I wanted the choice more than I wanted the myth. He asked, and he waited. I said yes and meant it.
The first give of my body against the press of his was a sting, then the tolling of a bell—shock breaking into heat, the sound I made when his thumb circled that place between my legs, and I learned what pleasure feels like with someone else.
I stretch lazily, reveling in every twinge and tender ache.
And maybe it’s a sin, but I don’t regret it. Regret is for accidents. Last night was not an accident. It was deliberate. It was mine.
I touch my mouth and it’s there—the ghost of wintergreen and smoke, the steady weight of a man who didn’t take, who stayed. I close my eyes and hold the memory until it stops burning and starts warming, the way good coffee does when you drink it too fast and survive.
I text Pru a white heart I should have sent hours ago, shower, dress, pin my hair without the veil. The church is quiet inside me now, but the rules I made still hum under my skin.
Today I’ll be good in the ways that count on paper. Last night, I was good in the way that counts to me.
The car is idling at the curb when I’m finally dressed and step out of the dorm to make my way to class. It’s a black sedan—but of course it is. That’s all the famiglia drives.
My cousin Nico leans against the rear door like a gargoyle somebody dressed in designer.
“You have class, I know,” he says, opening the door anyway. “It can wait.”
“Because I have a father?” I ask, resigned. I slide in. “What does he want now?”
“Breakfast.”
The Moretti townhouse smells like espresso, lemon oil, and something I can’t name that always makes me think of Sunday mornings when I was small and everything felt inevitable. The housekeeper takes my coat. Nico walks half a step behind me down the hall like I might bolt if he blinks.
My father is at the dining table with the paper in front of him and an empty cup that he hasn’t filled yet. He looks up and smiles that soft, careful smile he saves for me and funerals.
“Bambina,” he says. “Sit. Eat.”
Before anything else, I make sure that he has a plate. The carafe of coffee sits between us on the table. I pick it up and make sure that his cup is full. His plate has all of his favorites.
Only then do I sit. Quietly, I eat. That’s how we do this. He watches me butter a slice of toast like it’s an exam he can grade. Only, he’s never been angry or mean to me. Instead, it’s the silent expectation and the fear of disappointing him that keeps me going.
“How was your meeting with Dean Park?” he asks. Like we hadn’t already texted.
I sigh.
“Efficient.” I butter the other slice. “I signed the attendance sheet.”
His mouth doesn’t move, but his eyes agree with me. Attendance. Not soul. “Mother Superior speaks well of you.”
“Mother Superior speaks well of the donors.”
A breath, almost a laugh. He doesn’t like it when I’m sharp with the Church, but he likes it when I’m clever on his behalf.
Nico pours me coffee without asking how I take it. Black. He hovers behind my chair where I can feel him like an extra vertebra until Father snaps at him to be seated. Then he shifts his attention to me.
“You were out last night,” my father says, mild as the October weather’s been thus far.
“I was.” Sip. The bitterness is a small punishment and I deserve at least one.
“With Prudence?” he asks. It’s not an accusation. An invitation to lie, maybe.
I keep the lines of my face where they live when I’m being good. “Mmhmm. We walked. It’s Halloween.”
“And you walked to St. Brigid’s?” he asks, not looking at Nico at all, which is how I know he already knows. Nico is my father’s spy.
I cut the toast. Count the triangles. One. Two. Three. Four. And again. Four. “I like the quiet.”
“It is a beautiful church,” he says, like a benediction wrapped around barbed wire. “Who did you meet there?”
Nico shifts. I hear the subtle whisper of his suit jacket and decide to hate that sound for the rest of my life.
“No one.” I drink. Don’t flinch, even when the coffee burns the roof of my mouth. “Do you want me to say a priest?”
“I want you to speak the truth.”
“It was quiet,” I repeat. “I prayed. Pru waited near the doors. We left.”
An almost-smile plays at the corner of my father’s mouth again.
He used to take me to playgrounds when I was small and ask me to count every swing.
He never corrected me when I counted wrong.
He just kept asking until I got bored of my own answer and told him something different to make him be quiet.
I won’t do that this time.
“Purity,” he says, “is not a commodity the world will stop trying to buy…or steal…just because it belongs to you.”
“I’m not for sale,” I say.
“Maybe not,” he agrees.
Silence settles. The paper rustles when he folds it, straightening the crease like the world makes more sense when the edges meet.
“Friday,” he says, eyes still on the crease. “We will be having a sit-down with the Shannons. A dinner.”
My heartbeat does a small, traitorous skip. The Shannons are Southie saints with bloody knuckles. New money, old grudges. They keep the docks honest in the way men with fists make honesty happen while we keep the pews full and the ledgers clean with dirty money.
Their power looks like a brawl behind a bar; ours looks like a handshake in a sacristy. Same city, different altars. Same war, different incense.
A meeting with the Shannons can’t be a good thing. Last time our families had a sit-down ended in a bloodbath, with only a few men on either side walking away. I keep my hands still on the table.
“About what?” I ask.
“Stability,” he says. “Optics. The usual things men in old suits worry about when children put on masks and drink too much sugar.”
Nico laughs. It sounds like a hinge that needs oil.
My father ignores him. “I would like you to attend for the first course and then make your excuses. It is good for people to be reminded that you… exist.”
“Should I bring my halo and angel wings?” I ask without smiling.
“You bring your good sense,” he says. “And your jacket with sleeves. Roisin Shannon is said to be very competent. I would like you to meet her.”
Competent. Right hand. Sister.
I roll the words in my mouth and wonder what it costs her to be those things.
I’d rather be necessary than decorative.
To be the one with the numbers in her head, rather than the halo over it.
I’d rather be called competent than holy.
At least competence is something I own and not something I’m traded on.
“Of course,” I say.
My father nods like we’ve finished something important. “And Caterina,” he adds, voice casual, “you will tell me if anyone approaches you in a way that is… unseemly.”
He doesn’t say any of the Irish. He doesn’t say any of the Shannons.
My heart thunders in my ribcage. He doesn’t say in a church, behind a screen, with the door open and the rules written on your tongue. He can’t know. He can’t suspect…right?
He just looks at me with those eyes that see too much.
“If anyone approaches me in an unseemly way,” I say evenly, “you’ll hear my voice first.”
He takes that like a promise he has to pretend he trusts.
Nico sets his cup down too hard. The china clinks. “We could assign you a driver who stays closer,” he says, and by driver he means shadow and by closer he means inside your skin.
I turn my head just enough to meet his eyes. He likes being seen. He doesn’t like being understood. “I walk,” I say. “On a campus I’ve lived on for four years like a normal person.”
“There are no normal people,” he says, smiling in that too-white way that photographs well in terrible newspapers. “Only targets and the men who make sure they don’t look like easy ones.”
“I am not easy,” I say, and his smile falters for one blessed second.
“Basta,” my father murmurs, the sound half-exhale, half-command. Nico goes quiet in the way that means he’ll find another time to win.
My father pushes the folded paper aside. “I am proud of you,” he says, and I believe him even when I wish I didn’t need to. “Your projects—how are they?”
“Boring,” I say, because boring means safe. “Charity audits. Nonprofit accounting. The usual things we women in nice dresses worry about, I guess.”
He actually smiles at that. “Your mother would have liked that line.”
We don’t talk about my mother much. This is his way of saying he misses her and also he misses the person he thought I would be.
“I’ll text you about Friday,” I say, standing and lifting my chair carefully so its feet whisper against the rug. “I have class.”
He rises too. Kisses my temple, light as a stamp. “Be careful,” he says.
“I am always careful.”
Nico walks me to the foyer like a parole officer. He hands me my coat. Holds it hostage until I look at him.
“You’re playing with matches,” he says, all fake-cousin warmth stripped away. “Don’t light the house on fire because you like the color of the flame.”
I take the coat out of his hands without touching him. “Am I supposed to have any idea what you’re talking about, Nico?”
His eyes go flat. Then he remembers he is supposed to love me, and his mouth turns up into the shape of a cousin’s grin. “I’ll see you Friday.”
“Not if I see you first,” I say, and step past him into the cold.
Outside, the air bites the inside of my nose and makes everything feel newly scrubbed.
I stand on the stoop and breathe until the numbers I count come without effort.
Four steps to the car, where the driver waits.
Seven seconds to text Pru without Nico reading over my shoulder.
Twelve—always twelve—panes in the nearest window. Why is it always twelve?
Pru: You alive? Do I need to bury a cousin? I have a tiny shovel from the craft store.
Me: Haha. I’m alive and relatively unscathed. Friday sit-down with the Shannons.
Pru: That sounds intriguing.
I laugh out loud, which earns me a glance from the driver. My phone buzzes again before I can put it away.
Unknown: You owe me a confession for making me text you first.
My breath catches. I don’t need a name to know who the message is from. Cayce. Spelled wrong on purpose. Heat and trouble in a church who knelt when I told him to.
Me: How did you get this number?
A beat passes. Then—
Cayce: I can get all manner of things when I set my mind to it.
I look at the city passing by and the windows that keep secrets for a living, and then at my hands. They’re shaking the tiniest bit.
I don’t know why he’s texting me. We agreed that last night was a one-off. He would defile his saint, and I would have my one night. That was it.
Me: I have no regrets, but last night can’t happen again.
There’s a lengthy pause.
Cayce: You don’t need to worry about that. I just wanted to make sure you got home okay, kitten.
I watch Boston go by like a rosary I can count without bleeding. Something like regret burns at the back of my throat, but I shove it down where I don’t have to choke on it.
Me: I’m back where I belong.
The driver clears his throat, and I realize we’ve been sitting in front of my campus dorm for several minutes. Pushing open the door, I climb out and walk, gaze fixed firmly forward.
I pocket my phone and lift my chin to the wind.
Friday, I’ll be expected to smile at men with bloody knuckles and let them see what my father’s deemed me worth.
Nothing but the lies of purity. Last night I decided that for myself.
Let them try to bless or price me—I already know which word opens my door.