“We can visit the goats on weekends. I’m sure Aisling will take good care of them. And you can teach New York pigeons about manners.”
She considers this, eyes going far away like she is mapping out how to carry love from one house to another. “Only if Mammy comes,” she decides. “And Auntie Noreen’s flowers too.”
“We can plant daisies on the terrace.” Tears threaten, but I blink them away. “We can take a bit of this soil with us and tuck it in the pot so she knows the way.”
Livia nods like a queen granting permission. “Okay. But my jam jar comes on the plane.”
“Your jam jar comes,” Matteo promises.
I slide my chair back and stand because I need to move or I will calcify. Matteo straightens too. We reach each other in the middle of the kitchen without meaning to. He takes my hands and sets them against his chest like something that belongs there. His heartbeat rises to meet my fingertips.
“I’m afraid.” It tastes like truth and old wounds.
“Me too,” he murmurs. “But I am more afraid of you waking up one morning without me than I am of any enemy. Let me take you home. Let me make one for the three of us.”
Livia pushes her drawing across the table and clears her throat in a very important way. “We can put the picture on the fridge in Manhattan,” she announces, pointing. “It’s our family. Mammy.Papà. Me. And the goats but smaller.”
I pick up the paper, and my laugh breaks on the rocks of my chest. It’s three circles with stick legs and a rectangle with horns that looks a lot like a lopsided dog. Matteo examines it as if it is a contract he is honored to sign.
“Then it’s decided,” he says softly. He looks at me, not away, and the vow lives in his green eyes. “We leave at dusk. Leo’s men will ride with us, and the jet can be at Belfast by five.”
I nod because somewhere inside the ruins a door opens, and the air smells like the sea again. “We’ll go,” I whisper. “For her. For us.”
We spend the afternoon folding our lives into duffel bags. Livia gathers her treasures: the jam jar, a goat-chewed ribbon, the paper sun with too many rays. I take Noreen’s recipe book and her shawl that still smells like peat and lavender. Matteo finds a small trowel in the shed, and we kneel by the daisies to take a square of soil the size of a hand. Livia pats it smooth in a plastic tub like it is a cake she will not let fall.
Before we leave, I step into the sitting room one last time. The chair by the window wears Noreen’s cardigan across the back like a person about to sit. I press my palm to the worn armrest and picture her telling the goats to stop arguing with the rain. “Mind us from where you are,” I whisper. “I will try to be as brave as you were.”
Outside, engines purr at the lane. Gemini men in dark coats watch the hedgerows with a predator’s patience. Matteo locks the front door and then slips the key under the stone Noreen always used. We stand together for a long breath facing the cottage with the blue shutters and the people who made us better.
On the walk to the car, Livia reaches up and takes one of each of our hands. She swings them once, serious and satisfied. “When we get to the tall buildings, can we get a night-light with stars so Auntie Noreen can find us?”
Matteo squeezes her fingers. “We will get a whole sky.”
I squeeze back. “And a window for the moon.”
She nods, content, and climbs into the backseat with her jam jar held like a crown jewel. Matteo opens my door and bends close, voice a hush meant just for me. “This is not a goodbye to here,” he murmurs. “It’s a beginning somewhere we get to choose.”
I tip my forehead to his. “Then choose me again tomorrow.”
“Every day,” he answers.
We pull away from the cottage. The goats lift their heads and watch us go like dignitaries. The lane curves to the road and the road runs toward Belfast and the runway and a life I never believed I could have. I look back once and see the blue shutters, bright as eyes. Then I face forward, lace my fingers with Matteo’s over the console, and let the car carry us toward Manhattan and whatever we will be there.
CHAPTER 52
I OWE YOU
Matteo
Rain pinstripes St. Dominic’s black cars and shines the marble steps like a warning. All of Manhattan turned out in suits and silence, every family that ever did business with the Rossis or Valentinos sending a man in a dark coat to stand shoulder to shoulder for Leo DeLuca.
Inside, the nave is a deep breath held too long. Candles bend light around brass and grief. I take the front pew with Alessandro to my right and our fathers one row behind, their profiles carved from the same old stone as the pillars. Across the aisle, Ferraras, Valentinos, Mercurios, Solanos, men I’ve broken bread with and men I’ve threatened, all here because a good soldier took two bullets meant for me and for the woman I love.
Even the Morellos from La Spada Nera showed up. Somehow, while I was gone, Ale managed to forge peace with thebastardi. He hasn’t told me the details yet, but I know it cost us big.Some wars aren’t worth fighting, he’d said. And now, I couldn’t agree more, not when there are so many moreimportant things in life. Like our children, our wives—or future wives, in my case.
Father Anselmi’s voice draws me back to the present, speaking of service and steadiness. Of a man who “stood a post so others could sleep.” It should be a cliché. It isn’t. Leo’s mother, who must be nearing her eighties, cries into a handkerchief so fine it looks like smoke; his brother grips the pew so hard the tendons pop. I keep my eyes forward and my hands folded because if I look at them too long I’ll put my fist through a pew and disgrace us all.
When the pallbearers move, I rise to shoulder a corner of the casket. It is the one weight I am qualified to carry. It feels heavier than it should, or maybe that is penance settling into my bones. As we pass beneath the choir loft, the organ swells into “Be Not Afraid,” and somewhere behind me Serena’s voice slips and breaks. I stare at the crucifix and think about the kitchen tile in County Down and how fast a life can empty from a room.
