Chapter 5 - THE TICKET
Salvatore Reachi lived above a restaurant he no longer owned.
That told me everything about him.
The restaurant was in Bensonhurst, a dark old place with white tablecloths, brass lamps and photographs of men whose names had once mattered.
Salvatore sat alone near the back.
Seventy now.
Maybe older.
His hair had gone completely white, but his posture remained straight.
On his wrist was the silver watch.
I stopped walking.
Five years vanished.
Gas station lights.
Cold tile.
Two pink lines.
A man reaching across the counter.
That watch.
Salvatore followed my stare.
Then he slowly covered it with his sleeve.
Giovanni saw.
“So she remembers.”
Salvatore sighed.
“I wondered if she ever would.”
My knees nearly weakened.
“You were there?”
“No.”
“But your man was.”
“Yes.”
Giovanni pulled out a chair.
“Start talking.”
Salvatore looked at him.
“You do not command me in my own house.”
“This isn't your house.”
A faint smile touched Salvatore's mouth.
“No. You made sure of that.”
Something old existed between them.
Something bitter.
Giovanni remained standing.
“Why did you follow Sophia?”
Salvatore looked at me.
“To keep you alive.”
I laughed once.
“You should come up with something better.”
“It happens to be true.”
“By tracking me across three states?”
“You had enemies who knew what you meant to Giovanni.”
“I wasn't with him anymore.”
Salvatore's expression softened almost imperceptibly.
“Enemies rarely respect marital difficulties.”
Giovanni leaned forward.
“Who ordered it?”
Salvatore's eyes shifted.
That was enough.
“There was an order,” Giovanni said.
“No.”
“You just answered.”
Salvatore stood.
“I heard discussion. Nothing formal.”
“From the Bellinis?”
Salvatore said nothing.
I understood.
The marriage.
The war.
Everything led back there.
“So you sent me away to make Giovanni marry Isabella.”
Salvatore looked at me for a long time.
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the answer made me angry enough to shake.
“You decided my life.”
“I decided you should have one.”
“You could have warned me.”
“And you would have done what?”
I opened my mouth.
He answered for me.
“You would have gone back to him.”
I hated that he might have been right.
“You were twenty-three,” Salvatore continued. “In love. Angry. Frightened. You would have returned the moment he called your name correctly.”
Giovanni's fist tightened.
“Do not speak about her as if she was a child.”
“I speak about both of you as children because that is exactly what you were.”
Giovanni stood abruptly.
Salvatore did not flinch.
“You told her I chose Isabella.”
“I let her believe what you had already made possible.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“It is the only one you deserve.”
Their anger had history.
Mine did not.
Mine was clean.
“You forged my divorce papers?”
Salvatore looked at me.
“No.”
I believed him.
That frightened me.
Giovanni frowned.
“Then who did?”
“I don't know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I arranged distance. I arranged money. I arranged men to watch airports and bus stations.”
My skin crawled.
“I did not arrange your divorce.”
Answer one.
Open two.
I sat down.
“Money?”
Salvatore's face changed.
“You didn't know.”
“Know what?”
“The apartment in Pittsburgh.”
My heart stopped.
The first apartment I rented had required a deposit I did not have.
The landlord had suddenly told me an assistance fund covered it.
I had cried from relief.
“That was you?”
“Your mother-in-law.”
Giovanni froze.
“My mother?”
Salvatore nodded.
“Teresa.”
I stared.
Teresa Reachi had never liked me.
Or so I thought.
She had been elegant and restrained, always watching me as if trying to understand what Giovanni saw.
“She helped me?”
“She paid your deposit. Six months of rent. Medical insurance under an assistance program.”
My mouth went dry.
“I thought the clinic was free.”
“It was free to you.”
Giovanni looked furious.
“My mother knew where Sophia was?”
“For six months.”
“And never told me?”
“She was afraid you would go after her.”
“I would have.”
“Yes.”
Salvatore's voice softened.
“And then every Bellini watching you would have followed.”
Giovanni turned away.
For the first time, I understood something painful.
Teresa might not have been protecting Giovanni from me.
She might have been protecting me from Giovanni's visibility.
Salvatore removed his glasses.
“Your mother believed the marriage would calm things long enough to make Sophia safe.”
“And after?”
“She intended to tell you.”
“When?”
Salvatore said nothing.
Giovanni's mother had died two years after I left.
A stroke.
I remembered reading it online at two in the morning, crying silently so Lucia wouldn't wake.
“She had two years,” Giovanni said.
“She had guilt.”
“So?”
“You have never understood what guilt does to proud people.”
I did.
It made them postpone.
It made them tell themselves tomorrow would be easier.
I had done the same thing with Lucia.
Tomorrow I would explain her father.
Tomorrow I would stop being afraid.
Giovanni looked at me.
We both knew it.
Salvatore slipped his watch off.
He placed it on the table.
“Your mother gave me one instruction.”
Giovanni stared at the watch.
“What?”
“If Sophia ever came back willingly, I was to give her this.”
He pushed it toward me.
I did not touch it.
“Why?”
“Open the back.”
Giovanni picked up the watch.
His thumb pressed a small catch.
The metal case opened.
Inside was not a photograph.
Not a message.
A tiny pressed crocus lay beneath the glass.
Purple.
Fragile.
My chest tightened.
Teresa had grown crocuses behind the Reachi house.
The first flowers every March.
She used to say surviving winter was the only thing that made them beautiful.
Beneath the flower were four words engraved in the silver.
SHE DESERVED A CHOICE.
I closed my eyes.
Giovanni sat down.
For the first time since entering the room, he looked defeated.
“My mother knew.”
Salvatore said nothing.
“Knew what?”
He looked at me.
Not Giovanni.
Me.
His voice was very quiet.
“The morning after you left Pittsburgh, my man followed you to the gas station.”
Every part of me went cold.
“He saw what you bought.”
Giovanni stopped breathing.
Salvatore continued.
“He called me from the road.”
“No,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
I stared at him.
“You knew I was pregnant.”
Salvatore's eyes filled with something I had not expected.
Regret.
“I knew there was a very good chance.”
Giovanni stood so quickly his chair fell backward.
“You knew I had a child.”
Salvatore looked up at him.
May you like
And said the words that changed everything again.
“I knew before you married Isabella.”
