The bakery carries the morning in through the door seams and the board edges and folds it into the sounds that tell me where everyone is. Maria stacks trays and talks to steel without words, Lila’s knife works through a tray of bars with a measured rhythm, and from upstairs comes the soft rattle of crayons and a low hum that means Marco is building a map only he can read.
I keep my head down and my eyes on the reflections the glass case gives me, which is half the work on a street like this. The foxed mirror under the biscotti shelf gives me the rest. It shows the sidewalk, the door, and a glimpse of the upstairs curtains. I am not fixing a window. It is a position.
At 10:12, she comes into the picture the way a pebble breaks a mirror, small and sharp, sending lines where there should be none. A wool coat to the knee. Dark knit cap pulled low.Sunglasses with thin gold temples that catch light when she turns her head. Flats that make no sound on our stoop.
She holds her shoulders easily, but the ease is practiced, not native, and when she reaches the corner, she uses the hardware store window as if it were meant for checking hair and not tails. She does not stop. She does not enter. She looks once at the second-floor windows, not straight on but with a glance set low and canted, like the glass were a person she avoids, then she settles her hands into her pockets and keeps moving.
My hands move, and from my post, I note her height and cadence. Her right foot toes out on the second step down from a curb. She tucks her chin when a truck passes. It is a habit. The lipstick, a thin red line that shows she read more about women here than she met, wants to be an alibi.
At 10:58, she returns as if the street were a track and this lap had rules. The uniform has changed. Navy peacoat, the buttons polished. Hair twisted into a knot that is meant to read careless and reads planned. Oversized sunglasses in a different frame. A soft pink on the mouth. Low black pumps that let the heel whisper twice on the top board of our three-step stoop before she makes them stop speaking. Same woman. New costume.
She taps the lock plate with one gloved knuckle, light and precise, like a seamstress testing a hem. The touch lands exactly where my small dome camera sits. She does not look at the lens. She looks at the wood, a finger to the side, which tells me she saw it when she came yesterday and has been thinking about it since.
Her eyes lift to the upstairs window again, three seconds, no more. Then she peers into the bakery, a flicker of indecision passing over her face, as if she cannot quite remember what she came for. Her hand shifts toward the door, stops, and she gives asmall nod to herself, a smile that knows it is being watched. Then she turns and walks off, calm and unhurried, like a woman who has just remembered an errand elsewhere.
I straighten, close my hand around a cardboard box that used to hold café cups, and speak toward the kitchen.
“Front for five,” I say, and I keep it casual because Maria will read the sentence like a recipe and give me what I came for.
“Go,” she answers without turning.
I step into the cold with the box tucked to the ribs and take the same side she took. I watch the florist’s window and the barber’s glass more than the sidewalk because someone who knows she is interesting will check behind her and count faces, not refracted shadows.
It is a short walk to The Lantern, the only pub in town. The sign is made of old brass, polished for holidays and dull in between them. A chalkboard lists venison chili in block letters that are not the bartender’s hand. There are rooms for rent above, a door at the side with a metal stair that the county should have replaced last year, and a bulletin board that promises a band that has not come here in ten winters.
She goes inside. I do not. I walk past, turn the corner, and take the back stairs. The handrail burns through the glove with cold. The treads hold a skin of ice, slick and treacherous. The metal lines overhead hang low across the alley, heavy with frost, close enough to brush a careless shoulder. I am not careless.
The fire escape door gives under my hand, and I step into a narrow lobby. A push-plate door opens into a hall that smells of varnish, garlic, and the kitchen’s hot oil below. The walls arepainted a dull green, with large flowers curling across them. The brass numbers are worn smooth by years of hands.
The third door on the right is open by the width of a coin. Just inside lies a single pump, the same one from her second walk past the bakery, with its toe set to the jamb, a quiet marker. If anyone pushes that door, the shoe will move and tell her she has company.
I lean close to the seam, careful not to touch it, letting the space work for me. My eyes keep moving, tracing every door that might open on a curious face.
She speaks Italian, clipped and precise, the voice of someone who has been told too often to say less and learned to make every word count. My ears split their work, one side following her voice through the door, the other listening for the creak of boards or the soft shuffle of shoes. Every sense tilts outward, tuned to the tremor that means someone else is near. I cannot afford to be the man caught listening where he should not be. I hear only her side. It is enough.
“Si,” she says, the word a clipped yes rather than an idea. “Aprono alle sette precise.” They open at seven sharp. “La madre scende prima, accende la luce in cucina alle sei meno dieci.” The mother comes down first, turns on the kitchen light at ten to six. She pauses, listens, then continues in the same level tone. “Il bambino scende tra le otto e venti e le nove, dipende dalla neve.” Then in her enthusiasm, she prattles on, “Latte caldo e cereali rossi, l’ho vista versarli sua madre.” Warm milk and red cereal—I saw her mother pour them.
The small retreat of her voice tells me she realized the briefing has a pecking order. Then she hurries on, voice neat again, “Sì, sì, sì. Si siede vicino alla presa d’aria del pavimento.” The boycomes down between eight twenty and nine, depending on the snow, and has warm milk. He sits near the floor vent.
Paper moves against fabric. The phone rubs a scarf. She keeps going, the cadence flat and fast.
“Il gancio della porta sul retro gratta.” The back latch drags. They close it with a low kick. She tells them the front chain is old. The broken window has been boarded clean, though a thin line of light still leaks at the top left. Then she says something that stills me for half a breath.They have put a red pull cord in the pantry. Tug it, and a bell sounds somewhere.
I count the breaths between her notes. My palm stays flat on the door. Wood holds the inside better once the hall begins to stir.
“Lo sceriffo passa alle otto e trentadue, poi a mezzogiorno e quaranta.Si ferma se c’è il bus.” The sheriff passes at eight thirty-two, then at twelve forty, stops if the school bus is there. “Parla con la madre come se fossero parenti. Ridono.” He talks to the mother like family. They laugh.
A chair leg touches the floor on the far side and comes back. She is pacing. I stay where I am. A door down the hall opens and closes. The building coughs twice through the heat pipes and then settles.
“Alle tredici la donna porta fuori la spazzatura da sola. Il bambino dorme a volte tra l’una e l’una e mezza, ma non sempre.” At one she carries the trash out alone. The boy naps sometimes between one and one thirty, not always. “Gli piace il cappello, quello con il pompon.” He likes the hat, the one with the pom-pom. A small sound that wants to be a laugh but is not.
She changes hands on the phone. The sound moves across the hinge. She says, ‘church hall doors, kitchen sticks, side exit nearthe boiler, and two electricians at the church,’ the words as a list rather than a thought. The two men are not volunteers, she adds. Her tone drops half a step—an act of calculation. “Lui. Russo. Di sopra.” A pause, then she hurries on like someone who’s just heard the train doors close. “Sì, sì. Sta su certe notti.” Him. Russo. Stays upstairs some nights. He walks the loop at twenty-one, changes corners, and doesn’t like mirrors.
“Guarda il diner, la piazza, la curva sul fiume. Pensa di essere trasparente,” she breathes. He watches the diner, the square, the bend by the river.He thinks he’s invisible.The words come with a small lift, the kind a person gives when she knows something someone else doesn’t. I let that pass through me and out the other side and let nothing stick. There is no room for the rest of it here.
She listens for a moment, then starts again, her voice flatter now, as if reading from a card. She gives a time, a date, the place where the pageant will meet. Talks about the rehearsals, the children arriving in groups, the count never quite right. Her words come clean, stripped of her earlier color. My pulse climbs a step. I let them settle. It is not a shock, only confirmation. A line drawn, finally crossed.
Her steps cross the floorboards. “No, I haven’t been made,” she says, precise as a report. “The grandmother smiled. The woman looked through me. The boy didn’t see me. Yes, the town will bite if you startle it.” Her voice comes closer. A toe hooks the shoe and draws it back inside. I ease away from the seam, cross to the first window, then slip behind the door of the empty room. The bedspread there has a pattern of blue diamonds. The lamp tilts left—small details that hold me steady.
