Page 44 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"You talk too beautifully to be sincere."
"I talk beautifully because I'm sincere. Someone who tells the truth can afford the luxury."
"Luca…"
He raised his hand slowly. I saw the gesture coming, I had time to pull back, but I didn't.
His hand touched my chin, lifting my face an inch or two closer to his. The scar through his eyebrow now clearly visible, under the yellow light filtered through the arbor. The smell—cigar, whiskey, and that smell I still hadn't named and that I now knew was him.
I felt his thumb move up, slowly, and stop at the corner of my mouth.
He didn't kiss me, just stopped there, looking at me, and waited.
And I—because I was still the Valentina of the convent underneath all this new woman's flesh that had come to Posillipo, because I was still Salvatore Rossi's daughter, because I was still Matteo's sister, because I still had Francesca's letter burning in the inner pocket of the coat up in my room, with the line she'd written me,don't mistake the fire for the smoke—I closed my hand slowly around his bracelet, drawing his hand away from my face.
Not abruptly, but with care, like someone turning off a flame.
"No," I said.
"Why not, bella?"
"Because if I let you kiss me now, I won't be able to ask you tomorrow what I need to ask you."
"Which would be...?"
"Who killed my brother."
He stopped and looked at the stone floor between us, very slowly.
"Capisco."
"Capisco—really, Luca?"
"Yes."
"You'll wait for me."
"I'll wait for you."
I stood up very slowly and looked at him one last time before going back up the path.
"Luca. I'm going to come back to this arbor."
"When?"
"When I've asked the right question."
I went back up the path without looking back, walking to the house with my heart beating in my neck, my collarbone, my wrists, in all the places where a woman realizes she has blood.
And for the first time in three weeks, I didn't know whether the hunger was hatred or something else.
LUCA MORETTI
She went up, and I stayed on the stone bench under the arbor for another fifteen minutes.
Not smoking, not stirring, looking at the stone floor between my feet, where the sunlight filtered through the vine made uneven stripes that stirred when the wind stirred.
Madonna.
