The church hall attached to Our Lady of Sorrows was exactly what you'd expect from a building that had been hosting community events since 1962. Long folding tables, chairs that had seen better decades, fluorescent lighting that did nobody any favors, and a kitchen at the far end that was considerably better equipped than it had any right to be.
"I campaigned for the double oven," Sofia said, gesturing at it with proprietary pride as we carried in the first of our equipment. "Nineteen ninety-four. Father Deluca thought it was excessive. Father Deluca was wrong."
Daemon set down a crate of supplies and looked around the kitchen with a carpenter's eye. "What do you need me to do?"
"Tables," said Sofia. "The folding ones are in the storage room. Eight of them, in two rows. Leave a gap in the middle for people to move." She considered him. "And the Bertolucci brothers will be there. Don't let them put everything against the wall. They do it every year, and every year it creates a bottleneck."
"Got it," he said, and went to find the storage room.
Sofia watched him go. "He follows directions well."
"Don't let him hear you say that."
"Why not? It's a compliment." She was already unpacking, moving through my equipment with ease, having spent the past two weeks learning exactly how I organized my kit.
Meanwhile, I checked the temperature on the double oven Father Deluca had thought was excessive, and thought about the timeline, and tried not to think about what Sofia had said last night about Daemon pulling away.
He was fine. We were fine.
The sauce went on first. Sofia's marinara, my timing, the compromise we'd landed on after four sessions of negotiation that had occasionally resembled UN peace talks.
While it built, I started on the pasta e fagioli, the old version, the one Sofia had written out for me in her careful, slanted handwriting with the note real beans, not tinned underlined twice.
"You soaked them overnight?" Sofia asked, appearing at my elbow.
"Since Thursday."
The sound she made was of someone who'd expected nothing less and was pleased. "Good. The texture will be right."
The pollo alla cacciatora had gone into my van in the slow cooker at five that morning, six hours of low heat doing what no amount of technique could rush.
When I lifted the lid to check it, the smell that came up was the kind that made you understand why people had been making this dish for four hundred years. White wine, olives, capers, and the chicken unified with everything around it. Sofia leaned over my shoulder and inhaled, saying nothing, although not for long. An impossibility for the small octogenarian.
"My nonna made this," she said finally. "Exactly like this."
"I used her recipe."
"I know," she breathed out. "She would have liked you."
I kept my eyes on the pot and didn't trust myself to speak.
By eleven, the hall had filled. The Ladies of the Altar Society arrived in formation, Rosaria Benedetti at their head, her hat a study in poor taste. She looked at me in a way that spoke volumes while saying nothing. Sofia later told me this was the highest compliment Rosaria had ever paid anyone.
I found Daemon at the far end of the hall, adjusting the gap between the two rows of tables. He'd recruited two teenage boys to help and was currently explaining why the thirty-six-inch gap was non-negotiable.
"You sound like me," I said, coming to stand beside him.
He looked up. "Is that a compliment?"
"Absolutely." I checked the gap myself. "It's perfect."
He straightened. In the hall's unforgiving fluorescent light, with his fighter’s body and fighter’s nose, he looked out of place and yet completely at ease. I'd noticed that about him early and never quite stopped noticing.
"Sofia's holding her own in there," he said, nodding toward the kitchen.
"Sofia's always holding her own. I'm convinced she arrived on this earth fully formed and already winning arguments."
He laughed, low and quiet, and for a beat everything else fell away. The noise of the hall, the two of us standing in the gap between the tables, a gap that was exactly the right width.
