Chisa
HE’S NOT COMING BACK.
I knew from the start it was foolish of me to wait for him, but that’s what I did.
I waited for him, crying and hoping that he’d come back, and he’d tell me...
No.
He doesn’t believe I’m a killer.
But it’s already four in the morning, and so I know.
He’s not coming back.
The words echo in my mind endlessly as I take a pen and a stack of Rica’s old worksheets down to the nursery, then sit on the floor to work out who killed two men.
I know I may still end up grasping at straws here, but doing something is better than nothing.
Doing something is what will keep me from just crying and crying until I’m in danger of forgetting I have a baby girl to think of.
So let’s do this, Chisa.
The way Marcello’s world works, I have a feeling that the moment evidence was presented against me, no one questioned it.
That was it for them. And so it’s up to me to clear my name.
I may not be a trained detective. Or even a super smart person at that.
But I don’t have to be either. I just need to remember what happened in those weeks, and so...
Let’s see.
I remember what I used to do at Lutrell’s when the stock book didn’t match the till. I need to retrace everything, go through every transaction until I find the discrepancy, and so that’s what I do, too.
I go back. Day by day. Line by line.
The route first, because that’s the one he keeps coming back to.
November. The drive to Ana Lucia’s cousin in Indiana, eleven hours in the back of the car with my feet up on the seat because my ankles had gone. Marcello beside me, working. Vico in the front with Joey.
Somewhere past Hammond I woke up. We’d stopped for fuel. It was dark, and raining.
There was a man in a camel coat under the little plastic hood of a payphone, with his back to the car.
I thought he was calling a girl. Vico always had a girl.
I write it down.
Gas station, Hammond, November, V at payphone.
My hand won’t keep still, so I write it twice.
Then the dinner.
I’ve gone over that evening so many times in eight years that it’s worn smooth. But I’ve never once gone over it forwards, from the beginning, the way you check a column of figures.
Vico came to find me in the kitchen. A man had turned up in the city with Nonna Cristina’s ring—the one stolen in Palermo before Marcello was born, the one Ana Lucia still talked about every Christmas.
He wanted to sell it back to the family. Wasn’t that extraordinary? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing to give Marcello for his birthday?
And I’d know if it was real, wouldn’t I? I worked with stones.
He’d come with me, he said.
He promised.
Then the restaurant. The corner table. A waiter telling me Mr. Vico had telephoned—so sorry, signora, he’s stuck in traffic, he says to start without him.
So I sat down alone with a man who told me his name was Mr. Ybanez.
He showed me a ring. I turned it to the candle and told him, as politely as I could, that it was paste. Very good paste, but paste.
He laughed, said I had a good eye, paid for my dinner, then left.
Afterwards Vico begged me not to tell Marcello. It would only upset him, all that business about his grandmother.
Let’s keep it between us, Professor.
I thought he was being kind.
I write that down too. My eyes are streaming so hard I have to take my glasses off to do it.
The phone calls are the worst.
Because the calls are the thing Marcello can’t get past. Five of them, at three and four in the morning, from the landline in the front hall. Me. The only person in this house awake at that hour, walking off the cramps.
Only I wasn’t the only one.
I used to meet Vico in the hall. More than once. He’d just be coming in, and he’d laugh, then put his finger to his lips like we were two children sneaking down to the kitchen.
And one night his coat was over the hall chair. The camel one. There was a phone ringing in the pocket—a little silver thing, the kind that flips open, and I’d never seen him with it.
I took it out to bring it up to him.
He came out of the study in the dark and took it off me. Very fast. Then he laughed and told me it was for a married lady, so I mustn’t tell Nonna. And I said yes because that’s what people do when they’re so desperate to win their in-laws’ approval. They ignore their common sense and just—
“He came out of the study,” says a voice behind me.
I jump so hard the pen goes skidding across the floor.
Curzio is in the doorway with a tea tray. I’ve no idea how long he’s been standing there, and I’m sitting cross-legged on a dust sheet surrounded by paper, with my face wet and my glasses in my lap.
“You were talking out loud, and when I started to listen to you...”
Curzio comes in, sets the tray down very carefully on the windowsill beside the rabbit, then lowers himself onto the arm of the covered chair like a man whose knee has stopped being a joke.
“Could you say that last part again, signora? The one about the study...”
I bite my lip. It’s not like we’re accusing anyone of anything. Yet. We’re just...reviewing the facts. Right?
“Humor me, per favore.”
And so I go back to my notes and reread.
“He came out of the study. It was three in the morning. He’d been in the study.”
“The study has an extension.” Curzio’s voice has gone very quiet. “Same line as the hall. You can dial from either one.”
We look at each other, but neither of us seems able to say it.
Curzio rubs his hand down his face, and his hand isn’t steady. “I’ve always wondered. All these years, I tried to understand...” He looks at me like he’s just found out his own son is a mass murderer.
And in a way, I think that’s exactly what’s happening to him.
And to me.
“C-Curzio...”
I’m crying, and the old man also has tears in his eyes as he slowly gets to his feet.
Neither of us still wants to put it into words, and yet we know.
We both know what this means.
“Joey keeps a logbook,” he says gruffly. “He has done since he was a boy. Every run, every mile, in pencil, in his own hand. Thirty years of them, in boxes, in his garage.”
Is he...is he saying that’s our proof?
“If Vico was at a payphone at Hammond that November,” Curzio continues, “Joey’s book says what time they stopped and how long for.”
T-That’s what he’s saying, right?
Someone else’s guilt...is proof of my innocent.
He picks up his hat. “I’ll drive out there myself this morning—”
I’m shaking my head, and I just think...
I just think things are moving too, too fast.
I don’t know if it’s right to...to...pin the blame on someone else just to clear my name.
“W-We should think this through. We have to be sure—”
“That’s exactly why I need to do this, signora.” He puts the hat on. “Because if it’s true, then the past eight years...”
Oh no.
The older man is looking at me like he’s blaming himself all over again.
“It’s not your fault,” I whisper.
“I was the one who gave your husband the folder,” Curzio says painfully. “I never had the courage to tell you that, but now...now...I’m sorry, Chisa. I’m very, very sorry. Forgive me.”
And then, because he’s a man of his generation, this old soldier bends down and kisses my hand, and I have to bite my lip hard to keep from sobbing out loud.
“Two hours,” he tells me from the doorway. “Three, if the traffic’s bad. Don’t say a word to anyone until I’m back, signora. Not to the signore, not to Signora Ana. Not to anyone at all.”
I listen to him go all the way down the corridor, his bad knee making that sound it makes on the stairs, and then the front door, and then a car on the gravel.
After that, the house is very quiet.
I stay on the floor of the nursery for a while with all my papers around me, and when I finally make myself get up, I don’t know what to do with myself at all. So I do what I always do when I can’t think. I go and look for my daughter.
I’m halfway down the back stairs, still numb with shock, when Rica finds me with a question.
“Mama? What’s ‘not before the fourth’?”
I hastily wipe my tears away before mustering a smile for her. “Where did you hear that, baby?”
“Uncle Vico.” She’s got her nose in the phone, thumbing at a game. “In the gun room. I was under the desk feeding Chichi. He came in and he didn’t see me, then he got a phone out of his sock, which is gross.”
“Rica—”
“And he was cross, but he was being cross in a whisper. Like you in the supermarket.”
My daughter puts on a deep, scratchy, grumpy voice, and the hair goes up all over my arms. Because it’s Vico. It’s exactly Vico.
“Not before the fourth, I told you. When the gates open. You’ll get it after, Nunez. I swear on my mother.”
I’m not sure how I managed, but somehow...
Somehow I was able to smile and tell Rica we’ll talk about it next time.
Somehow I manage to pretend everything’s alright while I wait for a chance to speak to Marcello.
But when I finally make it to his study...
“Marcello?”
He looks at me, and I just...
No no no no no no.
I’m too late.