Page 98 of Valentino

"My uncle found the man. Giuseppe. He was alive then. He handled it the way things are handled in our world. I was twelve, so nobody told me the details. By the time I was old enough to ask, the details didn't matter. My father was still dead. Knowing what happened to the man who killed him wasn't going to put him back at our table."

Amanda nods against my chest.

She doesn't push for more.

I respect her for that. She knows when to ask and when to let something rest.

"Tell me about him."

I look up at the ceiling again.

"He wasn't a big man. Not like me. He wasn't tall. But people stopped talking when he walked into a room. He had that kind of presence. I don't know how to explain it."

"You have it."

I kiss the top of her head.

"He taught me how to shoot. Not well. Not enough to make me dangerous. Just enough to hold a pistol properly and respect what it could do. He taught me how to tie a tie for church. He taught me proper Italian. Real Italian, not just Sicilian. He said if I was going out into the world, I needed to speak the way the world spoke. He taught me how to cook, too. My mother gave me the recipes, but he was the one who stood beside me and made sure I learned them."

She presses her face into my neck.

I feel her smile.

"Keep going."

I smile despite myself.

"He held the rosary when he worried. When my mother got sick one winter. When I was little I had a fever. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing him sitting beside the bed with those beads moving through his fingers."

"Your mother," Amanda says. "She always seems... strong isn't even the right word."

"She's the strongest person I know. She buried her husband and raised a son in a house full of his absence."

My thumb traces her shoulder.

"She told me once that grief isn't the price you pay for love. It's proof that you had it."

Amanda lifts her head.

Her eyes are wet but steady. Lamplight catches the blue-green in her irises and turns the edges gold.

"That's beautiful," she says.

Amanda

My throat aches.

"I'm sorry," I say.

Valentino glances at me. "For what?"

"For your father." I pull the sheet higher around my shoulders. "He must have been a good dad."

"He was." Valentino's voice is quiet. "He wasn't perfect. He was in the life. He made choices I wouldn't make now. But when he walked through the door at night, he was mine." His thumb presses into his palm. "Every night, he came home."

That is the part that gets me. Not the shooting. Not the rosary. Not the grief. The certainty of it. I can't remember a single night in my life when I waited for someone and knew they were coming.

"Your parents," Valentino says. "Tell me."