Page 88 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"Prego."
He turned the key and the door opened without a creak.
Matteo had his back to me.
Sitting in a wooden chair by the table, a book open and a pencil in his hand. Clean white shirt, black pants, three weeks of beard.
He'd lost weight.
When he turned around, I saw my father's eyes. Small, black, resentful.
"Matteo."
"Sorella."
The word came out of him dry. No warmth in it.
I stayed standing in the doorway. I didn't run to throw my arms around him, and I certainly didn't cry. I'd already cried every tear in the world on the Via Tragara, in the pink house in Capri, on the yacht back to Posillipo.
"Are you all right?"
"I'm alive." He closed the book. Le Cosmicomiche, by Calvino. "All right is a big word for a man who lives in a room with no window."
"You have books."
"I have books." He smiled without smiling. "Your jailer is kind."
Jailer. The word hit me in the back like a thrown stone.
"He's not my jailer, Matteo. He's my fiancé."
"Right." He stood up, slowly, and went to the other side of the room, where there was a pitcher of water, and poured himself a glass. "That's what hurts me, sorella."
I bit my lower lip.
I didn't come here to fight. I came here to see if he's alive. That's it.
"Matteo. I read Mamma's letter."
He stopped pouring.
"What letter?"
"The one in the steel box in Mondello, behind the painting of Saint Sebastian."
"You went to Mondello?"
"I did."
He set the glass down on the table, slowly, as if it were crystal and he was afraid. For the first time, the coldness left his face.
"What did she write?"
"That she'd known since 2010. That she warned Papa in April of 2012. That she said if he didn't stop, he'd lose both his children."
Matteo closed his eyes. When he opened them, I saw them well up.
"Mamma," he murmured.
