I think about my kills. The mess. The blood that never stays where you expect. I don't say this.
I eat my pasta.
I find the photograph.
The bedroom closet is open. A drawer slightly ajar. The corner of a frame. Not hidden. Not displayed.
"Can I?" I ask.
His face does something complicated. Surprise. Reluctance. Decision.
"Yes."
A woman. Early fifties. Dark hair streaked with grey. His exact eyes. She's standing on this terrace, the bay behind her,smiling at whoever holds the camera with the private smile of a woman who loves the photographer.
"Maria Sorrentino," he says. "Née De Luca."
"She has your eyes."
"I have hers."
Cancer. Pancreatic. Four months from diagnosis. He keeps the photograph in a drawer because he can't look at her every day and run this family. She raised him to be someone else. A professor. A curator.
"She knew what your father was," I say.
"She knew. She stayed."
"And you think she'd be disappointed in you."
"I know it. Some mornings I look at my hands and I can feel her watching."
I put my hands on his chest. The Latin tattoo under my palm.
"She loved you," I say.
"Love doesn't precludedisappointment."
"No. But it survives it."
He pulls me against him. Chin on my head. We stand in the doorway between the bedroom and the hallway. The ragù cooling. Puccini fading.
Later. The bay outside the windows turns from gold to amber to the deep blue of approaching evening. We're on the couch. He's reading. I'm reading. My head in his lap, his hand in my hair, his fingers moving through the strands. Two people on a couch with books and silence. The most ordinary afternoon of my life.
I want to cry because of how ordinary it is.
I set my book down. Turn my head. Look up at him.
"Hi," I say.
"Hi."
I sit up. Straddle him. His book falls. His hands go to my thighs.
"Hi," I say again.
"You said that."
"I'm saying it again."
