Valerio felt a wave of gratitude for his younger sister. As children and teenagers, Orlanda never offered anything without a jab to follow. But they’d grown closer in the past decade. She seemed less inclined to tease and fight, more eager to help.
“You can have mine,” she said, spooning the steaming eggs onto a plate. “I’ll make more.”
Valerio took the offer without grace, scraping the eggs from the plate directly into his mouth. They were overdone—thick and rubbery—but hunger kept him from caring.
Penelope gestured imperiously.
“Sit down!” she commanded. “Eat at the table like a civilized person! I swear, you’re like one of my heathen sons. Is your shirt wet?”
Valerio rummaged in the bread box before taking a seat at the table. The rickety chair creaked and wobbled under his weight.
“Maybe we should call the priest,” suggested Orlanda.
“The priest can wait,” said Valerio, mouth full. “Mamma’s got to talk to the police when she wakes up.”
His older sister stared at him as he ate, eyes wide and hawkish. He tried to ignore it, but he had the unreasonable feeling of being a child again.
Penelope adhered to the same style she’d developed as a teenager, even as age thickened her face and waist and eyelids, softened her neck and arms. She dyed and styled her hair the same, hair spray molding her bangs into a solid shell. He’d never known her to be without bright colors and long, painted nails, red lipstick, and huge earrings. With her adornments missing tonight, there was something strangely vulnerable about the pale, naked skin. Her hair was soft and thinning. It draped against her skull, grey at the roots.
“Well,” she said, watching him for a few more beats, “are you going to tell us what happened?”
At the stove, cracking eggs into the pan, Orlanda swiveled around to look.
“I told you: She was a witness to a crime,” Valerio said, sopping up the greasy remnants of the egg from his plate with a piece of spongy bread. “I can’t discuss it!”
Orlanda gave a frustrated groan. “Give us something! What was the crime?”
“A woman was murdered,” said Valerio.
Both sisters started talking at once.
“I really can’t say more,” he said again. “I mean it. No! Stop. Are you two staying over tonight?”
“I’ve got to get back before lunchtime tomorrow,” said Penelope. “I can miss breakfast, but they’ll be howling by noon. Nobody can feed themselves without me.”
She brushed her palms on the table for a few beats before pushing to her feet.
—
They slept in their childhood places. Penny and Orlanda shared their old room next to the bathroom. This was where Valerio’s children, Davide and Gemma, slept whenever they stayed with their grandmother—so it was kept clean with fresh linens. Valerio’s narrow childhood bed was in a closet-size room at the end of the hall. He opened the door to find the space full—bed and floor stacked high with teetering plastic and cardboard boxes, pallets of canned food, bolts of fabric, and folded tablecloths and towels. It took fifteen minutes to empty it, piling everything into the hall.
He worked numbly, automatically, body on the edge of collapse. His mind returned to the gruesome scene in the church—the wrecked young woman, tiny white feathers settled onto crimson pools; hundreds of bloody footprints; clumsy helpers who obscured any useful evidence the murderer had left behind. He thought of his mother’s hands dripping with blood and rain. And the shock that had numbed her into silence. No, not silence. She had shouted—and at the Madonna! His mother, who had always been so respectful, who had rapped his knuckles when he didn’t display the correct piety—she had screamed at the Immacolata!
In a cardboard box he found one of his old T-shirts—mustard brown. It was folded and smelled clean, if a bit stale. He stripped off his wet clothes and put it on. Then, wrapping up in his old childhood quilt, he was asleep almost as soon as his body hit the mattress.
—
Sun glinted through the window when Orlanda woke him with a knock on the door.
“There’s someone here to see you.”
“Thanks. Is Mamma awake?”
“Not yet.”
His trousers, when he pulled them on, were wrinkled and a little damp.
—
