Page 144 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"I'm pregnant." The scream she let out from the other side of the sea woke half of Palermo, I'm sure of it. "You're going to be godmother," I said, laughing, crying. "Did you hear me? Godmother. No arguing."
"I wouldn't argue if you paid me," she said, crying too now, not hiding it. "Bella, you did it. You walked into that house and came out whole."
"I came out whole," I repeated, low.
We stayed on the phone for a while without saying anything. Just breathing, both of us, from different sides of the sea.
Then she hung up, because it was two thirty in the morning, and promised to come to Naples as soon as I let her.
And there I was, whole, with a child inside me and a man who loved me beneath me.
It's over, I thought.
No—it's not over. It began.
CHAPTER 45
"We bury our dead in the morning, and in the afternoon we have to learn to live again. No one teaches you how to do both things on the same day."
LUCA MORETTI
We buried our men on a gray morning.
The family chapel was at the back of the property, behind the vineyard—old stone, a low roof, a cypress on each side of the door.
My great-grandfather built it. My father is buried there. My mother too.
That morning, four coffins.
Tonio. Pasquale. And Enzo and Dario, the two young soldiers who'd fallen in the October attack, defending the house while I got Valentina out through the kitchen.
Four men. Four families. Four names I would carry.
I didn't give a speech. A Don doesn't give a speech. But I stopped in front of each coffin and said the name out loud, for everyone to hear, because a man who died for the family deserved at least to have his name said by the mouth of the Don.
The widows were in the front row. Enzo's mother, from Salerno, who'd sent her son to me with a recommendation and a blessing. Pasquale's brother, from Caserta.
I shook every hand, told each of them what would be done—a lifelong pension, a house paid off, children put through school.
The old way. The family took care of the families of those who died for the family.
In front of Tonio's coffin, I stopped longer.
Tonio carried me in the trunk of a car in 2009, when I took a bullet to the ribs in Rome and had to disappear. Tonio drove for my father for twelve years before he drove for me. Tonio looked after the nonna in Capri. Tonio took Valentina to the altar with the nonna in the back seat.
And Tonio died with two bullets in his chest, between my wife and death, at the pantry door.
I put my hand on his coffin. The wood was cold.
Grazie, I thought. You protected her, you protected both of them and didn't even know there were two.
Raffaele was beside me but said nothing. He just put his hand on my shoulder, once, and left it there.
The nonna was in the second row, her black dress more closed than usual, her cane braced in both hands. When our eyes met, she nodded slowly.
Coraggio, her look said. Coraggio, grandson.
After the funeral, I called Matteo into my father's study.
