“She might not see it like that.”
Chapter Three
Bianca
Nonna’s house smells like lemon oil and old paper, the church bulletin basket by the door still holding last Sunday’s copy with her notes in the margins—circled names and stars where the bake sale announcement was, a little arrow to remind her to bring biscotti.
The ceramic rooster on the kitchen windowsill stares out at the fig tree like it’s on guard duty. The lace runners on the dining room table are the ones I ironed with her when I was twelve; the iron scorched one corner then, and if you look closely, you can still see the faint brown kiss of it.
The couch is not wrapped in plastic—Nonna would rather die than squeak when she sat—but the armrest covers are perfectly square.
Mama fusses with a vase of lilies on the buffet until Zia Loredana catches her hands and folds them into her own. “Enough,” Zia says, softly. “He’ll be here any minute.”
“He should have been here already,” Mama says. Her eyes are raw. She didn’t sleep. None of us did. The only sound in the house is the cousins whispering in the hallway, with the clink of someone nervously pacing in the kitchen.
There’s a tray of sliced provolone and salami sweating on the counter because in this family, grief equals food, even when you can’t stomach it.
I stand at the edge of the dining room and press my fingertips into the seam of the table leaf. The wood is nicked where we did homework and rolled out pasta, and once, when I was sixteen and dramatic about it, carved a tiny heart with my initials on the underside where Nonna couldn’t see.
She saw. She saw everything. She pretended not to and then made me sand it smooth with the same patience she taught me with dough: even pressure, no tearing.
“Bibi, sit,” Mama says, using a nickname I cherished as a child, hated as a teenager. And cherish again as an adult.
I sit. The chair creaks a little and makes me think of when I was small and dangled my feet and swung them. Nonna snapped my ankle lightly with a dishtowel and told me to behave. I fold my hands in my lap because it seems like the kind of occasion you fold your hands in your lap for. Zia drops into the chair beside me and puts a glass of water in front of me so I don’t forget to drink.
The knock at the front door is three polite raps. The room holds its breath. Mama’s mouth goes thin in that way I recognize from the morning rushes at home when the restaurant’s dishwasher is late and the espresso machine is making that cough. She wipes her hands on her skirt even though they’re clean. She’s always wiping, always smoothing.
Zia is at the door and opening it.
Mr. Caruso steps in with a leather briefcase that matches his shoes. He’s been our family lawyer since before I was born. He is not related to us, but he has eaten at our table for years as if he were. He was here the night my grandfather died, or so I’m told.
He is a thin man, always, even thinner today, as if grief has shaved him down at the edges in just these few days. His gray hair is carefully combed back. He smells faintly of aftershave. He stops just inside and takes off his hat.
“Francesca,” he says to my mother. “Loredana.” His eyes find me. “Bianca.”
“Mr. Caruso,” Mama says. “Thank you for coming.”
He puts a hand on his chest briefly as if her thanks is too heavy to take in a handshake. “I am sorry for your loss,” he says, and means it. He looks at the miles of lilies we don’t know what to do with, at the photographs: Nonna young with hair like a darkness spilling down her back, Nonna older with flour on her wrists, Nonna holding me as a baby, Nonna at the restaurant under the new sign that said REGALIA in letters my cousin painted.
“The reading,” Mama says, because Mama is a forward motion kind of woman. “Let’s do it.”
“We can wait for whoever else you want to be present,” he offers. Polite. Professional. He knows there is almost always one aunt who is late.
“They’re here,” Mama says, and the hallway produces cousins like a magician with scarves. Marco and his wife, Talia, with the baby.
Zio Enzo—technically not my blood uncle, but in our family that line is too thin to matter.
More aunts drift in. Voices drop when they see Mr. Caruso’s case. The room fills up but feels bigger, even with all of us in it, like grief has thinned us all.
Mr. Caruso sets his case on the table, unbuckles it with small, old clicks. He takes out a manila folder and a small stack of envelopes with names written on the front in his precise, neat hand. He also takes out a tin of butter cookies—the Danish kindthat are different shapes but all taste the same—and sets it just to the side, like an offering.
Nonna always had a tin in the pantry. She kept buttons in the empties.
“I will keep this brief,” he says, though we all know that the law cannot help itself from being long. “Sabina kept her affairs in order.” He touches the folder like it might be an animal that needs calming.
“We spoke a month ago. She updated some things. She was very clear.”
Mama makes a sound that could be a laugh if it weren’t a sob. “Clear,” she repeats.
