I looked up and met his eyes. We did not turn away from each other. That was not the problem—no.Problems. He had become obsessed with my safety after the scorpion incident, especially since the man who had sent them had not been found. He had become obsessed with the man without a name, too. And it seemed like each day he moved into places that I could not follow without a bright light.
He was always watching me, though.Per sempre. Maybe waiting for another full moon so he could find me again.
I looked away from him and back at his grandmother. “Did your husband watch you from the same window?”
“No,” she said, going back to digging. “He did not watch me at all. He saw his wife. The mother of his children. But he did not see me.”
I braced my hands against the bench, sitting up some. She did not look at me, but I knew she could feel me watching.
“This life of theirs becomes ours, too, ” she said. “It’s not business for them, it’s a way of life. When you choose this life, there is no other. We live on the outskirts of real life, even though we can see it happening right in front of us. We socialize with other wives—their children become like our own. We throw parties for our family—Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, Fourth of July, weddings, baptisms. It all looks so glamorous. It looks like we livethelife.
“You’re a smart girl. I don’t have to lecture you on the realities. The constant scrutiny from the government. The constant hovering around your house. Theotherwomen—we go to some places, and they go to others. They can have agoomah,but they can’t disrespect us by bringing the woman, or women, to the same places. It’s expected that they have them. How can a man that powerful only have one woman? What would that make him?”
“A man,” I said. In this life, it would be harder to stand up to that particular expectation than bowing to it.
She stopped digging for a minute and grinned. “You are full of heat,” she said, and then she sighed. “Then the day comes when you have sons. And you ask your husband to spare them from this life.Yes,yes, they tell you.I will try my best.But it gets to them. It gets to sons, cousins, uncles. It even gets to the girls. They usually marry a son or a cousin. They become us.”
“You,” I said. “They become you.”
“You carry the Capitani name. You carry on the legacy. You carry many women who have sat where you are now—” she nodded to the bench “—with you. You are the Don’s wife. You are who I used to be. No matter how different we look.”
“It’s not the way we look,” I said. “It’s the way we react.”
She grinned again, and this time, it seemed out of pity. “Did Corrado tell you about my daughters?”
“Some,” I said.
She dug a little harder. Then she stopped after another minute, wiping the sweat from her brow. “I knew who his father was.”
“I thought—”
“They have their secrets. We have ours.” She looked at me then. Her eyes were dull, flat, even in the sunshine. “Luna fell in love with Corrado Palermo before she left home. That’s why she left, and Emilia went with her. We did not want her to leave, but she knew her father would never allow it. Corrado belonged to a different family, and at the time, there was a war going on.
“It would have caused even more strife if Emilio had found out. Luna was terrified that if he did, he would have him killed. At that time, Corrado Palermo was making a name for himself. Even I didn’t want her associated with him.” She touched her temple, leaving a dirt smear. “An idea made it here. To his head. It didn’t leave unless it was tired or done.
“My daughter was the same. So she left home and went to Vegas. She knew he would come after her no matter where she went, and her father would disown her when she did. Emilio did, Corrado Palermo followed, and she got pregnant not long after. But things were happening here, bad things, and since Corrado Palermo was like a son to Arturo Scarpone, he sent him to Italy to lay low for a while.”
“Corrado Palermo had a contract on his head. When things were safe here, he came back and broke it off with Luna. He had gotten married while he was in Palermo.”
She went back to digging, sighing. “He didn’t want anything to do with the baby or with Luna. She made us swear on each other, Emilia and me, that we would never tell. I have never spoke a word of this until today. My girls are gone.”
“Why are you telling me?” I whispered.
She brought her shoulders up to her ears and then let them fall. “I see that same obsession in my grandson. It worries me. History repeats itself, especially when it’s in the blood.”
“He is not his father,” I said. “He is not his grandfather either.”
“I agree.” She lifted the trowel and then started digging again. “But he has been raised in this life his entire life. He never had a chance to be anything different.” She looked me in the eye.
“My husband slept sound every night. All the things he did, and not once did he stir in his sleep, unless he ate something that bothered his esophagus. All of the things he did—where was his conscience? Tell me. Does my grandson, your husband, sleep sound?”
“Maybe his consciencewashis esophagus,” I said.
She grinned, but she knew I was avoiding the question she already had the answer to. Corrado slept sound whenever he slept, except for one time. When the boat in Lake Como had been blown up. He stayed up all night staring at me.
“I love him,” she said. “My grandson. More than my own life. But he chose this path.” She hit something in her garden. A metallic sound rang out.
She set the trowel to the side, took her gloves off, and then pulled out an old metal box from the ground. She dusted it off. The square box was clearly old, worn down even more by the mud that it had been packed in for what seemed like years.
