Page 113 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"Fratellino."
"Padrone."
"Come back to Posillipo. Tomorrow."
"Sì."
"Don't tell anyone."
"Capisco."
"I'll arrive in two days. You wait for me in Papà's study. Alone."
"Sì, padrone."
I hung up and looked out at the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Forty years, Carlo.
I didn't want this. You're the one who wanted it…
CHAPTER 35
"The house that was a refuge became a fortress. I crossed the gate as a wife for the first time. And the first name I heard was a dead man's."
Valentina MORETTI
The Posillipo gate was doubled.
I counted without meaning to.
Before the war, two men. After the attack, four. That morning, eight. Two at the gate, two on the ramp, two in the lower garden, two in the upper garden. And the garden, once green, once with my great-grandfather's grapevine, once with Donna Beatrice's lemon tree—empty. No gardener. No one.
Tonio drove; he didn't say a word the whole way from Positano. Madonna santa, I thought, his name still screaming inside me.
He didn't do anything. He just drives.
But I knew I was going to look at him that way for a while.
The house appeared at the bend.
White. Enormous. Shut.
Donna Beatrice was at the main door with Nonna Adelina.
I swallowed hard. The nonna hadn't gone back to Capri.
"Nonna," I said, getting out of the car, with eleven kilos of luggage in Donna Lucia's hand behind me.
"Signora Moretti."
Her black eyes swept my face, my coat, my left hand with the wedding band.
"You've lost weight."
"Sì, nonna."
She opened her left arm and pulled me in.
