Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Luca
The coffee is halfway through the pot when I hear bare feet on the floor behind me. Nina stands at the edge of the kitchen in her pajamas, the bear hanging from one fist, her hair flat on one side from the pillow.
Gemma's still asleep.
"Hi," Nina says.
"Hi."
She climbs onto the stool at the counter without asking, sets the bear next to the fruit bowl, and folds her hands like she's been rehearsing this. "Can you make pancakes?"
I've cleaned a warehouse floor at three in the morning with bleach and a garden hose. I've taken a bullet out of Fabio's arm with pliers on a boat off Trapani. I have never once made a pancake.
"Yes," I say.
There's flour in the cabinet because Megan stocked this kitchen, not because I did. I find eggs, milk, a bowl. Nina watches every move with her chin on her hands. There's a recipe on the flour bag.
The first problem is the flour. The bag is new and the paper tears wrong. A white cloud goes up over the counter, over my forearms, onto the floor. Nina puts both hands over her mouth. Her eyes go wide above her fingers, but the laugh comes out through them anyway, small and cracked in half.
"You're supposed to open it slow," she says.
"Now you tell me."
The batter comes together lumpy. Nina leans over the bowl and inspects it with a seriousness I've seen on customs officers.
"Mariela stirs it more," she says. "But not too much. Too much makes them flat."
"How much is not too much?"
She thinks about it. "Until your arm is a little tired."
I stir until my arm is a little tired.
The pan is another matter. I set the heat too high because high heat has always worked for me, and the first pancake goes from pale to black at the edges before I understand what I'm looking at. Smoke comes off it. The smell hits the back of my throat.
"Shit," I say.
"That's a bad word."
"It is." I flip the ruined thing into the sink. "Don't repeat it."
"Mariela says bad words in Spanish so we don't learn them," Nina says. "But Diego learned them anyway."
"Diego sounds smart."
"He's seven."
I lower the heat. Nina slides off the stool, drags a chair from the table across the floor with both hands, the legs scraping the whole way, and sets it next to me at the stove. Then she climbs up on it and stands there at my elbow like she's been assigned to supervise.
She's too close to the pan. I move the handle so it points away from her, and I put my hand at the side of her hip. Not holding. Just there, in case the chair tips.
She leans her whole weight against my arm.
"Now you wait for bubbles," Nina says. "Little ones. Then you flip."
"Who taught you all this?"
"Mariela. I got to crack one egg. Camila got to crack two because she's careful." She reports this without complaint. It's just the record of how things went.
The second pancake browns even. The third is better. Nina calls the flip before I do and she's right. When it lands she claps once and grabs my sleeve with flour on her fingers. The print of her hand stays there on the black fabric. Small. Five fingers, splayed.
I look at it too long. I make myself watch the pan.
You can do this. You've faced worse.
I flip the fourth one.
"That one's mine," Nina says, pointing. "The round one."
"They're all round."
"The most round one."
"Fine. The most round one's yours."
She grins up at me, and leans on my arm again. I keep my hand at her hip and watch the bubbles rise in the batter like she taught me.
That's when I feel it. The change in the room. I know when I'm being watched.
Gemma stands in the doorway. She's in the shirt she sleeps in, one shoulder against the frame, her arms loose at her sides.
She isn't coming in. Ηer eyes move from the flour on the counter to the chair to her daughter's hand on my sleeve, and they're wet.
She doesn't wipe them. Doesn't make a sound.
She just stands there and looks at us like the room might stop if she steps into it.
Nina hasn't seen her. Nina is watching bubbles.
I hold Gemma's eyes for one second. Two. Whatever is on my face right now, I don't want her reading it.
I look back at the pan first.
"Bubbles," Nina says. "Now."
Gemma
The flour is still in the grout when I wipe the counter down that night. I've gone over it twice with the sponge, and there's a white line along the seam by the stove that won't come out, and I decide I don't mind it staying there. Nina fell asleep at eight.
Luca is at the table with his phone face down and a glass of whiskey he hasn't touched. He's been sitting there for twenty minutes. I know because I've been counting while I cleaned, working up to the thing I want to ask.
"The dinner," I say. "At the Orsini house."
"What about it?" He doesn't look up right away. His thumb moves along the rim of the glass, one slow pass.
"What do I wear? What do I say. Is there a list, like Antonella made for the wedding, because that helped." I hang the dish towel over the oven handle and straighten it so the edges match. "And I want to know why Cesare looks at me like that."
Now he looks up.
"Like what?" he says.
"Like he knows me." I lean against the counter because standing in the middle of the room feels wrong.
"At the wedding he held my hand too long and he watched me the whole night.
It wasn't how a man watches a stranger. It was different.
Vico too, when he found us at the coffee shop.
He looked at Nina the same way and I got us out of there, but I keep thinking about it. "
Luca picks up the glass and drinks. When he sets it down, his face has gone smooth in a way I've learned to notice.
"He's old," Luca says. "I don't want to repeat what I've already told you. He wants to look at you and decide the marriage is real, because if it's real, the alliance is real. He verifies. We eat. We leave."
It comes out even. Every word in the same order. That's how I know it's rehearsed.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay?" His eyes narrow a little.
"Okay, meaning I heard you. Not okay meaning I believe you," I say, and his jaw shifts sideways, which I've decided is what he does instead of flinching.
"You went still just now. You do that when something matters.
You did it when Nina hugged your leg. You did it on the roof, and you're doing it right now, so I know there's more, and I know you're not going to tell me tonight. "
He doesn't answer. His hand drifts up and rests over his right shoulder.
I could push. Dominik taught me exactly what pushing costs, so I learned to read a room instead of asking questions, and this room says stop. Not because Luca will hurt me. Because whatever's behind his eyes is heavy, and if I pull it out of him before he's ready, it'll land wrong and break.
So I change the subject instead, and ask about the other thing that's been on my mind.
"This morning," I say. "The pancakes."
His hand comes down off his shoulder. "They were shit."
"The first one was. Nina ate four." I look at the flour line in the grout because it's easier than looking at him.
"Nobody ever cooked for her before. Me, and Mariela when I worked nights.
That's it. Dominik never made her a single meal.
Two and a half years he was her father, and he never once stood at a stove for her.
He'd hold her when people were watching.
When they weren't, she was mine to deal with.
" My voice stays level. "This morning… she's never done that with anyone. "
The quiet after that lasts a long time. The dishwasher clicks over into its dry cycle. Outside, the lake is a black strip past the city lights.
"Gemma." He stands. The chair scrapes, and he crosses to the counter, close but not touching, because he warns me first, always.
"There are things I want to tell you. About the Orsinis.
About me. More than you'd fucking believe.
" His voice drops rough at the edges, the way it went on the roof after he screamed.
"I can't yet. Not because I don't trust you.
Because once it's out, I can't take it back, and I need to know I've done it right.
I need some time. That's all I can give you tonight, and I know it's not enough. "
"Okay," I say.
"That's the heard-you okay or the believe-you okay?"
"The I'll-wait okay." I push off the counter and stop in front of him, close enough to see the gray coming in at his temples. "I think I know how you carry things. So take your time. I'm not going anywhere, and apparently I'm not allowed to anyway."
A breath goes out of him.
"Go to bed," he says. "I'm coming."
I go. In the doorway I look back once. He's at the window with his glass.
I know that there is something really wrong going on. I just don't know yet what it is.