Luca headed out to the courtyard, and I followed him. He picked up the watering can, filled it at the fountain, and began attending to the lemon trees.
The courtyard held heat even at an early hour. Luca tipped the can over the second tree. Water darkened the soil and spread to the pot’s terracotta edge before the ground absorbed it.
He set the can down and pinched a dead leaf from a low branch. He turned it once between his fingers before releasing it.
I listened to a car moving down the avenue. The engine sound was ordinary, but the speed was slow. It was crawling. Luca heard it too.
The engine note was ordinary at this hour. But the speed was slightly off—not stopped or crawling, just slower than someone moving through with a destination. Luca heard it the same moment I did.
He set the watering can down. We both looked toward the avenue.
It was a dark sedan with two occupants visible. They passed the gate and nearly stopped before continuing to the end of the block and turning.
I looked at Luca. “Fontenot’s address is twelve blocks from here,” he said quietly. “Bridget is on Prytania.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not saying it was either of them.”
“No, you’re saying someone still finds this address interesting.”
He picked up the watering can and finished the last tree. Three days until the concert.
Whatever Henri Fontenot had been building across eight months of careful payments wouldn’t announce itself early. It would arrive on schedule when the final chorus of “Saints”lifted the hearts of eight hundred people. The only variable we’d changed was the podium mark.
I looked at the courtyard wall. The worn mortar between the bricks. The tallest lemon tree rooted in the ground, high enough to put a person’s hands on the second-floor balcony rail.
Beyond the wall, everything was quiet.
For now.
Chapter seventeen
Luca
Ipressed Dominic’s white shirt with the iron. Steam rose and then disappeared into the kitchen air.
On the table beside me, I’d already laid out the black suit, the narrow silk tie he preferred for dress rehearsals, and the pocket square he would almost certainly remove before we left the house.
His score sat in its case on the counter, pencil clipped inside. Water bottle filled. Lozenge tin checked. Backup reading glasses in the jacket pocket because he would deny needing them until the moment he did.
The house was quiet, but not restful. I heard a murmur of voices from the courtyard, where Eamon and Thiago were going over something together before breakfast.
I set the iron upright and ran my thumb across the shirt placket to check for any wrinkles I’d missed.
“That’s an impressive amount of aggression directed at the linen.”
Dominic stood in the kitchen doorway in a pale blue robe, with one hand braced on the frame. His silver hair was still damp from the shower and combed straight back.
“It behaves better under discipline,” I said.
“That has not been my experience with linen.”
“That’s because you treat fabric as though it exists to admire you.”
He considered my comment. “It does, to a degree.”
I looked over at him. “And you are wide awake.”
