“At 8:00,” I say absentmindedly.
“Yes, at 8:00,” she says. “I just want it done.”
“You think he’ll—what? Be kind because Nonna passed?” My laugh is short. “They’re not exactly what I’d call kind people.”
“He’s been…” She searches for a word and comes up with one I hate: “Fair.”
“Fair,” I repeat, disbelieving. “What does fair mean, Mama? It means he hasn’t broken a bone or lit the restaurant on fire?”
“It means I offered terms, he set terms, we stuck to terms,” she says. “He has not humiliated me. He has never put on a show in my restaurant. He came tonight through the back like a person who knows how it works.”
“Because he owns half the city,” I snap.
“Because he understands food,” she shoots back roughly. “Don’t look at me like I’m praising a saint. I’m stating facts. He eats here. His men eat here. He made sure I could keep feeding them. That’s the trade.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose, try to push my headache back into my skull. “How much is left?”
She shakes her head. “Not now.”
“If I own this, I need to know.”
“You own it on paper. I’m the one in here every day,” she says, and the line lands in my heart like a knife.
“I didn’t ask for that,” I say, small.
“I didn’t either,” she says, smaller. The words sit there, stupid and true.
We stare at each other. My mother looks like she did when I broke the blue plate at thirteen and lied about it.
My stomach turns. “Is that why you wanted the restaurant to be yours? In the will?”
She looks away. “I wanted it clean for you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I didn’t want you to have to sit across from a Conti at 8:00 a.m.,” she says, voice flat again. “I didn’t want you to have to be brave here.”
I grip the arms of the chair. “You thought if you got the restaurant, you could keep this from me. Keep paying until it's gone. Then one day you’d say, ‘Surprise, I saved you.’”
“Yes.”
“Do you hear how that sounds?” I ask. “Do you hear how that makes me feel? Like a child. Like you don’t think I can stand in a room with adults.”
She flinches again, softer this time. “I didn’t say you couldn’t stand. I said you shouldn’t have to.”
“But I do,” I say. “Because of a key I didn’t ask for and a letter that told me to take a chance.”
Her eyes shine again. “What did you want me to do, Bianca? Sit your nonna down at the table and say, ‘Mama, I failed at being you?’”
“You didn’t fail,” I snap. “You kept a roof on and a stove lit.”
“I failed at being her,” she says, and the quiet words kill me. “She didn’t need anybody. Ever. She made men cry with a look. I barely had the restaurant for a year, and I needed help. I went to the place where help always comes with a warning label.”
I push my fingers into my hair and pull once, just to feel something sharp that isn’t words. “So now what?”
“Now I meet him at 8:00,” she says. “We talk about a plan. I keep paying. You go back to Florence and run your menu and live your life and let me finish what I started.”
The last sentence hits me harder than the rest. “You still think I’m leaving.”
