Page 97 of Promised to the Don of Naples
"August of 1995." The nonna was in no hurry. "In this very armchair I'm sitting in now, only at my house, on the Via Tragara. Lucia was thirty-something, with Matteo still little, running around the garden. Your father was a terrible man, but she didn't yet know exactly how much."
I felt my blood heat. Not with anger—with something else, something I didn't have a name for yet.
"Nonna," I murmured.
"I'm going to tell you, signora. Things my grandson doesn't know." She rested both hands on the head of the cane. "But not today. Today I'm going to rest. I'm old."
"Va bene, nonna."
She looked at me for a long moment, then set the cup on the side table.
"Signora."
"Sì."
"Before the altar, I want you alone with me in a room. For an hour."
"Sì."
"There are things a mother says. Since yours is already gone, I'll say them."
I felt a stubborn tear slide from the corner of my eye. I didn't wipe it away, just let it go.
The nonna took up the cane and braced both hands on it. She pushed herself slowly to her feet.
"Three weeks," she said, more to herself than to me. "Three weeks and this house has a real signora again."
And she left, slowly, the short step of the cane tapping on the marble.
I stayed alone in the room. My fingers still on the keys of Luca's mother's piano. My mother's Chopin stopped in the middle of the bar. The smell of black coffee from the cup the nonna had left.
Mamma, I thought. You played for her. In Capri. In 1995.
You were in this family before me.
I closed the piano lid.
CHAPTER 30
"Before I became a man's woman, I became the daughter of two mothers. And only one of the two was alive."
Valentina ROSSI
I woke up alone.
Luca's bed was wide and cold without him beside me. He'd slept in the study—Donna Beatrice had warned me the night before, in the voice of someone explaining tradition to a child: si non si vede la sposa il giorno, signora. The padrone doesn't see the bride on the day.
I looked at the ceiling and took a deep breath.
Madonna santa.
The door opened without a knock.
"Buongiorno, signora."
Donna Beatrice. Steel bun already done at six thirty in the morning, black apron, a tray of strong black coffee with bread and honey. She set it on the bed, beside me.
"Eat, signora. Today's going to be a long day."
