I found her in the hallway, reflected in the glass of a framed family photo—the one from George and Claudia’s twentieth anniversary, everyone smiling, Rosaria at the center in her pearls. She was staring at the photo version of herself with an expression I couldn’t read.
“George always was weak,” she said, as I passed. “Even as a boy. No spine. He let Salvatore bully him, let me bully him, let everyone bully him because it was easier than fighting back.” She paused. “He married Claudia because she was the first woman who told him what to do and did not make him feel ashamed of needing it.”
I stopped, pretending to look at the photo. “Rosaria?—“
“And she is wearing my pearls.” Her voice went sharp enough to cut glass. “My mother’s pearls. She claimed them the week after the funeral. The week, Gina. Before I was even cold in the ground. Told George she wanted something to remember me by.” A sound that was almost a laugh. “As if she needed the pearls to remember the woman who told her she was not good enough for her son.”
“You told everyone that.”
“Because it was true of everyone. My sons had terrible taste.” She gave me a look. “Present company very much included.”
“Charming.”
I moved down the hall. Rosaria moved with me, skipping from the photo frame to a decorative mirror to the glass panel in the den door.
“Paula was always the disappointment,” Rosaria continued, her voice softer now, drifting from the den door’s glass to thewindow at the end of the hall. “The tattoos. The art. The refusal to be what I wanted. I told her she was wasting her life and she told me to go to hell and we never recovered from that.”
I waited.
“She did not mean it. I did not mean it either. But the Ferraros do not apologize. It is a genetic deficiency.”
From the living room, Paula’s voice carried—something sharp to Sal, who fired back. The normal Ferraro soundtrack.
“Who killed you, Rosaria?” I said it quietly, facing the window, my back to the hallway. “You’ve been in this house. You’ve been watching them. Just tell me.”
Her form flickered. The edges went staticky, the way they had in my bathroom that first night. “I’m afraid I can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Can’t.” The word came out strained.
“Then lead me,” I said.
“I am trying.” And for once, she sounded tired. Not imperious, not demanding. Just tired, and old, and dead. “Go back to the gathering. Watch. Everyone in that room had a reason to want me gone. Your job is to figure out who acted on it.”
I walked back to the kitchen, where Carmen was arguing with Josie about something I couldn’t hear and Nick was refilling his water glass for the third time. Claudia was wiping down a counter that was already clean, pearls gleaming at her throat. George hadn’t moved from his armchair. Paula was pouring another glass of wine.
Everyone in this family had a reason to want Rosaria dead. She’d made sure of that. Fifty years of control and criticism and conditional love, and now she was gone and the wreckage she’d left behind was sitting in a McMansion eating brie and pretending to be fine.
I collected my boxes from the garage, loaded them into my car, and hugged Carmen goodbye. She held on tight.
“Let’s get together soon, Mom. Please.”
“We will, sweetheart.”
I drove the thirty-minutes home to Starfall Bay with Rosaria riding silent in the rearview mirror, both of us thinking about the family she’d built and the secrets they were keeping.
CHAPTER SIX
I had barely gottenthe boxes into the cottage, when the doorbell rang.
Tammy was standing on the porch when I opened the door, holding a casserole dish and a bottle of wine and looking at me with the expression of a woman who had not been invited but did not consider that relevant.
“Lori called,” she said, pushing past me into the hallway. “Said you went to your ex-husband’s house to get some boxes. So I brought chicken tetrazzini and a Malbec, because nobody should open sad boxes on an empty stomach.”
Tammy set the casserole on the kitchen counter with the authority of a woman reclaiming territory. “Lori’s parking. Jill’s bringing napkins because she broke my last set of cloth ones on Tuesday and feels terrible about it.”
“She broke napkins?”
