Nick was in the kitchen doorway. He saw me, and his whole body did this thing — a lean forward, weight shifting to the balls of his feet, one hand coming off the doorframe. For one second he was moving toward me. Then he caught himself. His hand went back to the frame. He opened his mouth, closed it, and turned to the counter where he picked up a glass of water withboth hands, like he needed something to hold so his arms had a purpose that wasn’t greeting his mother.
He drank the water without tasting it. I could tell because he grimaced — it was the filtered water from the fridge that Sal kept ice-cold, and Nick had always hated cold water. He drank it anyway. Kept his back to me. His shoulders were tight enough to crack walnuts.
“Gina.” Sal’s voice came from the dining room, and it carried the warmth of a January sidewalk. He appeared in the doorway, arms crossed, still handsome in that faded way that worked on dental hygienists and apparently not on wives of thirty years. “Your stuff’s in the garage. Five boxes. I was going to drop them at Goodwill next week, so good timing.”
“You were going to donate my grandmother’s recipe tin.”
“I didn’t know what was in them. You left them.”
“I left in a hurry. There’s a difference.”
I should have gone straight to the garage. Grabbed the boxes, loaded the car, driven back to Starfall Bay. That was the plan. That was the smart plan.
Instead, Carmen handed me a cup of coffee and pulled me to the kitchen table, and I sat down because saying no to Carmen was something I’d never been able to do. From the kitchen, I could see into the living room and the dining room beyond, and I found myself watching the family the way Tammy might—reading the room, looking for what people were trying to hide.
George was in the corner of the living room, perched on the edge of an armchair like he was ready to bolt. Sal’s younger brother had always been the quiet one, the one who faded into the background at family events. He was fidgeting with his phone, turning it over and over in his hands. When Sal said something to him from the other room, George flinched before answering.
“Uncle George has been weird lately,” Carmen murmured, following my gaze. “More than usual. He spends all his time in the den with his model airplanes. Claudia says he locks the door and won’t come out for hours.”
George’s model airplanes. I’d forgotten about those. He’d been building them for years—intricate, detailed replicas that took months to finish. It was the one thing that was entirely his, the one space where Rosaria’s judgment couldn’t reach him. She’d called it a waste of time. Sal had called it pathetic. George just kept building.
Claudia swept in from the dining room carrying a cheese plate nobody had asked for. She set it on the counter with the practiced grace of a woman who’d made hosting look effortless for two decades. Blonde highlights, tennis tan, a cream cashmere sweater that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget. Everything about Claudia was polished and precise, like a showroom display.
“Gina, can I get you anything? Something to eat? There’s that brie you used to like.” Her smile was perfect. Warm, concerned, the ideal daughter-in-law stepping up in a difficult moment. She’d been doing this since Rosaria’s death—filling the matriarch-shaped hole with volunteer work and cheese plates and gentle competence.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
Claudia arranged the crackers around the brie with the focus of someone defusing a bomb. “I keep doing things like this and thinking she’d critique the presentation. She would, too. You know how she was—everything had to be just so.” She gave a small, fond laugh.
Something caught the light at Claudia’s throat. A strand of pearls, creamy white against her tan skin. Elegant. Familiar.
Rosaria’s pearls.
Claudia saw me looking and touched them lightly. “Rosaria would have wanted someone to wear them. They were just sitting in the jewelry box. George said I should have them.”
“They look nice,” I said, because what else could I say?
Claudia smiled again and glided toward the living room. “Oh, I meant to ask everyone—I’m chairing the Humane Society benefit next Tuesday. We’re doing a silent auction, and I really hope you’ll all come and bid. It’s for a wonderful cause. The shelter needs a new wing.”
Paula, who’d been silent in the corner with a glass of red wine that was not her first, let out a laugh. “A benefit. My mother’s only been dead a few months and you’re chairing benefits.”
“Paula.” George’s voice was quiet, warning.
“What? I’m just saying.” Paula took a long drink. She was the youngest of Sal’s siblings, the rebel—tattooed, sharp, an artist Rosaria had dismissed at every opportunity. Her hair was shorter than the last time I’d seen her, dyed a deep red Rosaria would have despised. “The old witch would’ve hated it. All that money going to dogs instead of the family name.”
“Don’t call her that,” George said, still quiet, still fidgeting with his phone.
“She called me worse.” Paula raised her glass in a mock toast. “To Rosaria. May she rest in whatever passes for peace when you’ve spent fifty years making everyone around you miserable.”
The room went tight. Sal’s jaw worked. Nick studied his water glass. Josie’s thumb stopped scrolling.
Carmen squeezed my hand under the table.
I looked at this family—my family, once—and I saw fault lines everywhere. George, wound so tight he might snap. Claudia, smooth and composed and already wearing the dead woman’s jewelry. Paula, drowning her grief in cabernet and honesty. Sal, who’d lost his mother and his wife in the same year and seemed mostly angry about the inconvenience of both.
And my kids. My kids, caught in the middle of all of it, choosing sides in a war they hadn’t started.
Rosaria had been quiet since I’d walked through the front door, which should have worried me. It did worry me. Rosaria was never quiet without a reason.
