Page 154 of Promised to the Don of Naples
My hands locked. The knot in my throat.
Not today, not yet.
But I didn't shut the lid in anger, like the other times. I left my hand resting on the keys and took a deep breath.
Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I play it all the way through. With the nonna here, with Matteo, with Luca. Tomorrow I finish the music.
I settled my accounts, Mamma. All that's left is to finish your music.
CHAPTER 49
"My whole life I stopped the music at the same measure. It wasn't a lack of technique—it was that I still had an open account with the silence."
Valentina MORETTI
The nonna came from Capri that afternoon.
I hadn't called her, but Donna Pia phoned in the morning to say that Signora Adelina had woken, ordered her bag packed, and asked for the boat. "She said she had to be in Posillipo today, signora. She didn't say why. You know how she is."
I knew. She arrived in the late afternoon, and when she saw me at the door she only said:
"Today, signora?"
"Today, nonna."
She nodded, as if she'd known since Capri. She probably had.
So I gathered the house in the music room.
It wasn't a ceremony. I just went calling them, one by one, and they came. Luca set down the shipowners' papers and came. Matteo came up from the study. Raffaele appeared from somewhere with that way of his, arriving without being seen. Donna Beatrice stopped tidying the kitchen and came, drying her hands on her apron.
When they were all there, I looked around the room.
Luca in the chair by the window, his elbow on the arm of it, looking at me with his whole life in his face. The nonna in the green velvet armchair—hers, the only one, the one she'd had brought from Capri. Matteo sat on the floor, near the piano, the way he used to sit when we were children in Mondello, legs crossed, the gap-toothed smile. Raffaele leaning against the back wall, arms crossed, the charm at rest. Donna Beatrice in the doorway, half in, half out, in her way of guarding the house even when she's part of it.
My family.
The one I didn't choose and the one I chose, mixed together. The brother who came back from the dead. The brother-in-law who held the monster awake. The grandmother who wasn't mine and became mine. The housekeeper who chose my side when I was just a stranger locked in a room. And the man—the man I came to this house to hate and to kill, and ended up loving more than was safe.
I sat down on the piano bench and lifted the lid.
The nonna, in the green armchair, already had wet eyes before I touched the first note.
I rested my fingers on the keys.
And I began.
Op. 9 No. 2. Mamma's nocturne. The left hand first, the bass rising soft, then the right coming in with the melody.
And as I played, I crossed my whole life.
I played Mamma in Mondello, on Sundays, with her fingers resting over mine. I played the convent, the moonlight in the room, the acceptance letter from Bologna kept in the drawer, the life I'd chosen in silence and that never happened. I played the day my father said: you're getting married in three months, Valentina. I played the road from Palermo to Naples, the fear, the dagger in the bag.
I played Villa Moretti for the first time—the most beautiful prison I'd ever seen. I played the photo on the wall where I recognized Matteo alive. I played the vineyard at night, Luca waiting, his elbow burning mine.
I played the grapevine, the almost-kiss, my hand turning his face away. I played the first kiss in the dark room. I played the attack, the blood on his shoulder, the first night.
I got close to the end.
