Chapter 19 #2
He laughed. “I see that.” He glanced at Angela, then at the baby, then at me, and his face went very serious for a second. “She looks good, Pietro. You did good.”
I didn’t say anything. He hugged me harder, then let go, embarrassed by his own feeling. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
We went down the steps, into the mud. The sun was high, the air full of the noise of spring birds. Marco led the way into the rows, stopping here and there to point at a particular graft or a spot where the buds were coming in thicker than last year.
He talked about the vines the way some men talked about cars, or women, or the markets. “This one’s stubborn, but she’ll come around. See the graft? I almost lost her last March, but look at her now.” He touched the stalk with something like reverence.
I tried to listen. I tried to care. But my mind was on Angela, on the way she had held the baby, on the way she had smiled and then looked away, her face open and unguarded. I wanted to freeze the moment. I wanted to keep it safe, so nothing could ever take it from her.
Marco picked up on it. “You’re not listening,” he said. Not a question.
“I am,” I said.
“No, you’re thinking about her.” He smiled. “I don’t mind. It’s a good look for you.”
We walked in silence for a while.
He said, “You’re going to do it tonight, aren’t you.”
“Yes.”
He grinned, teeth white in the sun. “She’ll say yes.”
“I know.”
“Hey,” I said. “Thanks for letting us stay here.”
“Like I said, cousin, any time.” He slapped my back, a heavy whump that echoed down the row. “I’m proud of you,” he said. Then, softer: “She’s proud of you too. Even if she never says it.”
We walked back toward the house.
In the yard, Serafina and Angela were on the grass, the baby between them on a blanket.
Angela was holding Vittoria’s foot and making faces at her.
Serafina was watching the baby, but every now and then she glanced at Angela, and I saw in her face the look that had passed between me and Marco in the vines: she knew, she understood, she was happy for what had happened here.
When we came close, Angela looked up. She had tears in her eyes, but she wasn’t crying. Just letting them be there. She wiped them away with the back of her hand and smiled at me.
“Look,” she said. “She’s smiling.”
“It’s gas,” Marco said. “Don’t trust it.”
Serafina flicked his ear. “It’s a smile. She likes Angela.”
Angela blushed. She handed the baby back to Serafina and stood up, dusting grass off her jeans.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” she said to me.
“In a minute. I need to get the rest of the wine from the cellar.”
She nodded. She touched my shoulder as she passed me, the same way she always had: light, but sure.
Marco and Serafina went inside, the baby making small noises, the two of them bickering quietly about whether it was time for the next feeding.
I watched Angela walk toward the far end of the property. She didn’t look back. She didn’t have to.
I started toward the cellar, but the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel drive made me stop.
I turned.
Sal was here.
He stepped out of the car in a suit that looked like it had been ironed by hand, probably because it had. He shut the door with the same care he used for every object he touched. His face, when he saw me, was unreadable.
He walked over, hands in his coat pockets.
“Fratello,” he said.
“Sal.”
He looked around. “Where is everyone?”
“Inside. Angela is out by the river.”
He nodded. “Come.”
He led me toward the barn, a hundred meters down the drive, where the sound of the house and the river fell away.
Inside, the air was cold and sharp with the smell of hay and machine oil. Sal closed the door behind us, then took a folded document out of his coat and handed it to me.
I opened it.
Bill of lading. Scordato eastern shipping office. Three weeks ago.
Gianni’s signature at the bottom, a flourish I knew as well as my own name.
The document was a routing for a single container. Port of departure: Piraeus. Port of entry: Palermo. The consignee was a shell company—Sal had circled the name.
I recognized it.
Angela’s work had flagged it in Malta, in the big board she built for Dante after the Enzo operation: a Valenti node, old Halberd money, supposed to have gone dark.
I looked up at Sal.
He said, “It’s not Valenti. It’s Gianni.”
I felt it in my stomach. A cold, hollow pit.
He said, “I have been watching his shipping since he betrayed Serafina. This is the first proof.”
“What do you want to do?”
He looked away, out the narrow window at the field. “Nothing. Yet. We say nothing to Dante. Nothing to Arturo. We need more.”
“He won’t listen.”
Sal shook his head, once, sharp. “He will not. Not until we have something he cannot deny. And then—”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
I folded the paper and handed it back.
He put it away.
We stood there for a moment, the two of us, the weight of our uncle on our shoulders.
He said, “Are you happy here?”
I thought about it.
I said, “I think so.”
He nodded, satisfied. “Good. Because I think Din Aturo wants to keep us here a while longer.”
“It’s no bad thing.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, a heavy, steady weight.
Then he walked out, leaving the barn door open behind him.
I followed, a moment later.
The sun was so bright on the field it made my eyes water.
Angela was at the end of the property, standing at the bluff, looking at the river.
I went to her.
When I reached her, she looked up and smiled.
I smiled back.
The wind picked up, and the smell of the vines came with it.
I let myself believe, for a minute, that everything was possible.
“Baby Girl,” I said, “Come with me?”
She looked at me, blinked once, and nodded.
We went down into the vines. I didn’t say where we were going, but she let me lead. Her hand slid into mine, fingers cool from the porch, and I felt the small callus at the base of her middle finger, the result of a lifetime of pens.
We walked in silence for a while.
At the bottom of the first row, the earth was soft and dark.
I guided her to the second row, then the third, not by plan but by a memory: Marco’s voice, the first time he’d shown me the field, telling me, “She’s down here.
The oldest one. She came with the house.
Nobody knows what she is, so I say Monreale. ”
When we reached her, I stopped.
Angela looked at me, then at the vine. The bark was old, scarred from a hundred harvests. The new growth at the top looked almost foolish, bright green on black wood.
“Why here?” she said.
“This is the first vine Marco planted. The one he grafted.”
She put her fingers on the trunk, gentle. “She’s stubborn.”
I smiled. “She is.”
We stood facing the river. The bluffs threw the sun back at us, so everything around us was amber and honey. Angela breathed in, deep, and I saw her shoulders relax.
I said, “Can I tell you something?”
She turned. Her eyes were darker in this light, the green at the edges gone to grey.
“Anything.”
I held her hands. I felt her pulse, calm and steady.
“First time I touched you,” I said, “You bit my hand.”
She laughed. “You deserved it.”
“I did. I still have the scar. I’m glad for it.”
She squeezed my fingers.
I said, “I lied to you once, and I told you I never would again. I haven’t. I won’t.”
She nodded, serious.