Chapter Forty-Two
LUCIA
Three weeks later...
The old Rossi Imports sign is still hanging above the building when we arrive.
Several of the letters have faded to ghosts beneath years of soot. Rust streaks the brick below the bolts, and one end of the sign dips low enough that Marco has already called it a hazard twice.
I refused to let the contractors take it down.
They can restore it.
They can reinforce it, repaint it, encase it in steel if that will help Marco sleep at night—but it stays.
I stand on the Prince Street sidewalk and tip my face toward it.
The late-summer sun warms the crown of my head.
Traffic crawls past the end of the block, accompanied by an impatient horn and the hiss of a bus stopping at the corner.
From Enzo’s shop comes the smell of fresh bread, strong coffee, and the cured meats hanging behind his counter.
The neighborhood moves around us as though this is an ordinary morning.
It isn’t.
“Still time to change your mind,” Gio says beside me.
I look at him.
He wears dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves pushed to his elbows. Sunglasses hide his eyes, but the angle of his smile gives him away.
“About the building?”
“The name.”
“I like the name.”
“You rejected all of mine.”
“Casa Gio was never a serious suggestion.”
“It was memorable.”
“So is food poisoning.”
Marco steps out of the SUV behind us. His jacket is folded over one arm, and he’s carrying a leather portfolio thick enough to contain the deed, construction plans, insurance policies, and several documents I have almost certainly forgotten.
“Are we going inside?” he asks.
“He’s criticizing the name again.”
“I’m not criticizing it,” Gio says. “I’m mourning the death of creativity.”
“Harbor House is a perfectly respectable name.”
“That’s the problem. It’s respectable.”
Marco looks at me. “Do you still like it?”
“Yes.”
“Then the matter is settled.”
Gio lowers his sunglasses enough to look at his brother. “You could pretend to consider my opinion.”
“I did consider it.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough.”
I leave them on the sidewalk and open the door.
A brass bell rattles overhead.
Enzo glances up from behind the counter. His white apron is dusted with flour, and his reading glasses have slipped toward the end of his nose.
“You’re late.”
I check the clock above the shelves. “By three minutes.”
“Late is late.”
“Marco wanted to bring every document associated with the building.”
“I brought the documents we need.”
Gio follows us inside. “That’s what he says about every document.”
Enzo looks toward the portfolio in Marco’s hand.
“You should’ve brought a wheelbarrow.”
“Thank you,” Gio says. “Finally, someone understands.”
Marco ignores both of them.
The familiar smells close around me as I walk farther into the shop. Coffee. Bread. Olive oil. Old wood warmed by the sun.
The building is different from the last time I came. Not visibly, perhaps. The same narrow aisles divide the shelves. The same handwritten prices are tucked beneath jars of tomatoes and imported vegetables. The floor still complains beneath every third step.
But now I possess the keys.
The building is in my name. The tenants have signed their new leases. Enzo’s shop will remain exactly where it has been for nearly half a century.
And today, the renovation officially begins.
A ladder stands near the door to the back hall. Rolls of protective paper lean against the wall, and blue tape marks the places where the contractors will begin working tomorrow.
Enzo comes around the counter.
“You’re sure about all this?” he asks me.
It is not the first time he has asked.
“Yes.”
“A lot of strangers coming through the building.”
“Only during construction.”
“And afterward.”
“Yes.”
He grumbles beneath his breath.
“You agreed to it.”
“I agreed because you own the place.”
“I don’t want you to agree because you think you have to.”
His eyes lift to mine.
For an instant, I see the man who remembered my mother before fear changed her. The man who kept her photographs and knew which pieces of her history belonged to him and which did not.
“I agreed,” he says, “because it’s a good thing.”
Then he points one thick finger at Marco.
“But if your contractors interfere with my deliveries, I’m billing you.”
“The contractors work for Lucia.”
“Then I’m billing her.”
“Much better,” I say.
Enzo nods, satisfied.
A noise comes from the back of the shop, followed by Angela’s voice.
“Bruno, if you drop that, you’re cleaning it up.”
“I’m not going to drop it.”
“You said that about the flowerpot.”
“That was thirty years ago.”
“And you dropped it.”
Angela appears in the doorway carrying a shallow wooden crate. Her silver hair is pinned away from her face, and she’s wearing a green dress printed with small white flowers.
Behind her, Bruno carries two bottles of wine and a paper bag pressed to his chest. Dario and Armando follow with enough food to feed twenty people.
I stare at them.
“What is all this?”
“Lunch,” Angela says.
“We were supposed to meet with the architect.”
“And you will. After you eat.”
“It’s ten in the morning.”
“Then you have plenty of time to become hungry.”
She pushes the crate into Gio’s hands.
He looks inside. “Cannoli?”
“Don’t touch them.”
“I was only looking.”
“You look with your hands.”
“She knows me so well,” he tells me.
Angela kisses my cheek before walking toward the stairs.
“Where are you going?”
“To make sure the room is clean.”
“There isn’t a clean room in this building.”
“Then I have work to do.”
Dario follows her, carrying two canvas bags without being asked. Bruno starts after them, but Armando catches the back of his shirt.
“The wine.”
“What about it?”
“It’s ten in the morning.”
Bruno glances at me. “She said we’d become hungry. She didn’t say we had to become sober.”
Marco takes the bottles from him.
“We’ll save them for lunch.”
Bruno looks offended, but he allows it.
This wasn’t supposed to be a celebration.
The real celebration is months away, after the walls have been repaired and the plumbing replaced. After the offices are built. After the attorneys, counselors, and advocates have rooms where private conversations can remain private.
After Harbor House is ready to open its doors.
Today was only supposed to be paperwork.
But as I look around at the people filling the narrow shop, I realize Angela would never have permitted something important to happen without feeding everyone involved.
“Come,” Enzo says.
He lifts the hinged counter and gestures toward the rear of the building.
I follow him.
Marco and Gio come with me.
We pass through the storeroom and enter the back hall. Sunlight angles through a high window, illuminating plaster dust and the worn pattern of the floor. Several sections of wall have been opened to expose pipes and old wiring.
The staircase rises ahead of us.
Its banister is dark with age, the varnish worn away where generations of hands have followed the curve. Dust lies in the corners of the steps. One spindle is cracked, and the third stair complains when Gio puts his weight on it.
Marco looks at the ceiling.
“The structural engineer said it was sound.”
“That is not the face of a man who believes the structural engineer,” Gio says.
“I believe his report.”
“But not the staircase.”
“I believe it needs work.”
“It’s getting work,” I remind him.
Marco’s attention comes back to me.
“But it stays,” I add.
“Yes.”
No argument.
No sigh about the additional expense.
Only agreement.
I place my hand on the railing.
I don’t truly remember climbing these stairs with my mother. Not in the way I remember her standing in the kitchen or sitting on the edge of my bed.
What I have are fragments.
Her hand around mine.
A narrow hallway.
The scrape of my shoe against a wooden step.
Her voice telling me to be quiet, but not why.
Enzo said she brought me here once or twice after my father died. Before Dmitri. Before she disappeared completely into the life that followed.
Perhaps those fragments belong to this staircase.
Perhaps I have attached them because I needed somewhere to put them.
It doesn’t matter as much as I once thought it did.
The staircase belonged to my mother.
Now it belongs to me.
And eventually, it will carry women toward rooms where no one is permitted to decide their futures for them.
“The architect wants to widen the hall at the top,” Marco says. “It will make the third floor more accessible without altering the stairs.”
“You already asked her?”
“This morning.”
“I thought this was my meeting.”
“It is.”
“But you spoke to her first.”
“I asked whether a solution existed. I didn’t authorize it.”
Gio gives me a solemn look. “He’s making progress.”
“I’m standing here,” Marco says.
“I know. I wanted you to hear the compliment.”
I turn toward Marco.
He has changed in ways most people would never notice. He still anticipates problems before anyone else realizes they exist. He still makes plans inside plans and carries enough authority to bend entire organizations around his decisions.
But he stops now.
He brings me the information and waits for me to choose.
“I’ll discuss it with her,” I say.
“All right.”
“And the original railing stays.”
“I assumed it would.”
“Even if it costs more.”
His mouth shifts, almost a smile. “I assumed that too.”
We continue upward.
On the second floor, one of the apartment doors opens. Mrs. Rinaldi peers into the hall, her gray hair wrapped in a scarf and a small white dog trembling beneath one arm.
“You’re making noise again,” she says.
“Not yet,” I tell her. “The noise starts tomorrow.”
“How long?”
“Several months.”
She looks at Marco as if this is personally his fault.
He takes one small step backward.
I nearly laugh.
“Your apartment will be done first,” I assure her. “The contractors will replace the plumbing and repair the kitchen before they begin the upper floors.”
“I don’t need a new kitchen.”
“Enzo said the sink leaks.”
“Enzo talks too much.”
From downstairs, Enzo shouts, “I heard that.”
Mrs. Rinaldi closes her door.
Gio watches it shut. “She likes you.”
“I can tell.”