Page 22 of Broken Trust

“Then be smart and let me make it go away.”

Mia tosses the magazine onto the coffee table. “Pa has cut me off completely,” she says, like she's telling me it's raining. He did that a year ago, but I know my suocera has been sneakily giving her money. “Did you know that? He says he's not giving me another cent until I get a job.”

“A job,” her mother repeats, like it's a dirty word.

“He says he's been paying for my life for twenty-seven years and he's done. He wouldn't even cover my rent this month.” Mia rolls her eyes. “He wants me working in a shop, Dante. Can you imagine?”

“So,” my suocera says, “it falls to you.”

And there it is. This has nothing to do with Rosa. It never did. Aldo finally closed his wallet, Mia has never worked a day in her life, and now she's looking for someone else to pay the bills. I'm the closest.

“What do you want?” I ask.

Mia sits up and moves the cherries to the table. “Enough to get out of here. Milan, maybe, or Paris. Somewhere nobody knows me.” She glances at the carrier and then quickly away. “And I'll sign whatever you want. You can have her. Full custody. I won't fight you.”

“You'd just sign her away?”

“I never wanted to be a mother,” Mia says, and shrugs. “That was always Gia's thing. I only ever wanted you.”

I nearly chuckle as she says it. She never wanted me, she just wanted me to be her meal ticket, and like an idiot I fell for it.

Rosa picks that moment to wake up properly. Her face screws up, she goes bright red, and she lets out a cry that fills the whole apartment. I unclip the carrier and lift her out and hold her against my shoulder, bouncing her gently, and dig in the bag for a bottle.

Mia winces and reaches for the TV remote.

That's it. Whatever I thought I felt for her, it's gone. Gia would have given anything to hold this baby, and Mia can't even stand to hear her cry.

“Fine,” I say.

My suocera raises an eyebrow. “Fine?”

“Take it. Take all of it. The house, the savings, whatever's left in the accounts. I don't care.” Saying it out loud feels like setting down something heavy I've been carrying for a year. “You want me to pay? I'll pay. But Mia signs every paper my lawyer puts in front of her, and she never comes near my daughter again. Not for anything. Ever.”

Mia smiles, Gia's smile on the wrong woman, and it makes my skin crawl.

“See, Mamma?” Mia says. “I told you he'd be reasonable.”

Her mother stands up and brushes off her skirt, all business now that she's got what she came for. “Good. I'll have our lawyer call yours. We'll set up a meeting for next week and put everything in writing.” She stops at the door and looks back at me. “You married into a good family, Dante. You should be grateful.”

I get the bottle into Rosa's mouth and she latches on right away, staring up at me, her whole body going soft. I stand in the middle of the living room feeding my daughter while her mother flips through TV channels and her grandmother checks her lipstick in the hall mirror, and neither of them looks at her once.

“Oh, I'm grateful,” I say for my baby girl and nothing else.

When Rosa finishes, I burp her, tuck her back into the carrier, and walk out without saying goodbye. By the time I reach the bottom of the stairs she's asleep.

I've just agreed to give away everything I own, and I should be scared to death. But as I step out into the cold with my daughter asleep on me, all I feel is relief. For the first time in a year, I'm free.

15

GIA

Saturday is sauce day. By nine I've got two big pots bubbling on Nonna's old stove, one for Fiorenzo and one for the Bianchi twins down the lane, who are eighty-four and still fight over who gets the last meatball. The kitchen smells of garlic and basil and the bread I put in the oven an hour ago. There's flour on my jeans and tomato on my sleeve, and I'm humming along to the radio like a woman without a care in the world.

I hear Nella's car before I see it, her old Fiat rattling up the track, so I wipe my hands on a towel and go out onto the porch. She climbs out with a grocery bag on each hip and a suitcase bumping along behind her.

“Mamma finally let me into your old room,” she says, nodding at the case. “I grabbed your winter coats, your good knives, and that hideous lamp you love.”

“It's vintage.”