“So,” I said, “What do we do?”
“You stay here.”
“Okay? Why?”
“Because. Trust me.”
She switched the dome light to off and got out, closing the door before it beeped. She opened the back door and collected the bags.
“Dude,” I said. “You’re taking the groceries?”
“I don’t have a gun. If I bring this I look like a harmless little woman delivering food to children.”
Martha had gotten very ambitious at the market, and Theresa didn’t have enough arms for all the bags. She struggled, leaving an entire tube of salami and a flat of pepper plants behind. She closed the door, walking toward the road in the moonlight.
I looked back at the food and plants she’d left, then at her.
If she could play the helpless woman, worse, if she needed to, I could play as well.
I caught up to her at the open gate. She didn’t acknowledge my presence for a few steps.
“Plants?” she said. “Literally?”
“I told Martha they were growing tomatoes. She figured they had land. Teach a man to fish, et cetera.”
“She’s a keeper.”
Up ahead, an old stone house loomed. It was dark and empty. Theresa got off the main drive and moved around the side. My heart was pounding so hard it hurt. If something happened to me, Jonathan was going to kill me for real.
“I don’t see another car,” I said.
“They hid it.”
“Just like we did?”
She stopped behind shoulder-high brush and dropped her bags.
“That’s why you’re staying back while I go in. Put that stuff down.”
I laid the salami tube and the flat of pepper plants on the ground.
“Look,” I said. “I know you’re like some kind of badass or something, but—”
“Monica.” Exasperated, she picked up the salami and left the rest. “Don’t make me sorry I brought you.” She walked toward the house, head up, eyes everywhere.
Fuck that. I could be badass too. As long as I came out alive Jonathan would forgive me.
I picked up a canvas bag full of cans and followed her.
“If you’re going to come,” she said without looking at me, “stay behind and watch my back.”
I could do that. I looped the bag’s handles around my fist and let her get ahead. The crickets thrummed at a deeper pitch in southern Italy, and the birds made a cacophony of noise I hadn’t heard before. I checked behind, to the sides, everywhere. We were clear. A bug slapped against my shoulder and I jumped.
“Shh!” If a shush could be a shout, Theresa made it. She waved me over to a dark corner on the side of the house and pointed to the back. “Light.”
She was right. A warm, yellow glow filtered through the interior to the backyard. We waited. Or, more accurately, Theresa waited. I would have just strolled on back there with my cans of beans.
The light shifted and swung to the left. A flashlight. Voices. The squeal of a little girl. Theresa sucked a breath when she heard it.
The girl laughed.
Theresa exhaled, but still, she didn’t move.
“If we sneak back there it looks like we’re up to something.”
“You have no idea who it is,” she growled.
“Shit or get off the pot,” I growled back.
“Fine.” She strode to the center of the side drive and walked to the back of the house. I followed, head high as if we belonged there.
He came out of the bushes—a shadow bum rushing Theresa with his arms out, trying to get at her waist. I didn’t take a second to think. My nerves were code red, and my muscles had a mind of their own. I swung the bag before he reached her, smacking him across the side of the head so hard he was flung back four feet.
“Antonio!” Theresa cried as she ran to him.
My heart sank. I dropped the bag.
“I’m sorry!”
Antonio shook the bees out of his head while Theresa and I helped him up.
“Nice shot, goddess.”
I let Antonio go when I heard footsteps and Jonathan’s voice behind me.
“What the—” I didn’t finish. A little girl was at my feet, punching my leg and screaming in Italian.
“Ow!”
A boy picked her up and took her away, not to save me, but to protect her.
Standing in a circle: Antonio with his hand on his head, Theresa cooing at him, Jonathan looking at me as if he didn’t know what to think, and two children huddling defensively, we were frozen in time.
It was late and I was in a mood.
“We have more groceries in the car. Little help, please?”
ANTONIO
Jonathan and I had brought tools and materials to fix the roof and the pipes. They’d brought food. For over a year, the kids had eaten fine by themselves but the women brought food and fucking toothbrushes. I thought this was the thing that bothered me. After I let Nevio know my sister-in-law was safe and we put everything away together, I was too tired to defend my position.
Jonathan and Monica went home at three in the morning. I found my wife on the worn, dusty couch in the candle light with Simona’s head on her lap. Nevio slept on a cushioned chair, curled into a ball, drooling as he hugged his rifle.
“This is a scene from an opera,” I said, pulling a dining room chair from the corner. I planted it across from Theresa. An ornate wooden coffee table was between us. “Except for the olives.” I pointed to the rows of olives on the broken glass of the coffee table.
“I think counting soothes her.”
“Si, si.”
“What should we do, Antonio?”
I rested my elbows on my knees.
“Tell each other where we’re going, first of all.”
She smiled and looked down at the girl whose hair she stroked.
“I was so relieved you hadn’t gone to the Carlonis that it didn’t even occur to me to be mad.” She looked back up at me. “I guess it occurred to you.”
“I was going to throw you over my shoulder and put you in the car.”
“That didn’t go well.”
“It did not.”
“How’s your head, by the way?”
“Fine. Bene.”
We sat in silence. Nevio turned onto his back, draping his legs over the arm of the chair and gently snoring.
“What should we do?” she asked again. “We can’t leave them here. They witnessed a crime, and you said yourself that putting them in social services, or whatever you have here would expose them.”
“We can’t take them back.”
“Can’t we?”
It was the first time she spoke aloud what I knew she’d been thinking since that afternoon. Possibly, she hadn’t been able to speak the words in her own mind. Or she was waiting for me to hear it first.
“They’ve been through enough,” I said. “Taking them out of the country to a place where they don’t know the language? Look how they live. Did this one,” he jerked his head toward Nevio, “ever say he wanted TV or video games? No. He’s more mature than most adults in America and he’ll be held back in school.” I sat back in the chair, imagining how hard it would be to move them. Not just the change of language, but the change in culture and expectation. “And who are we to these kids?” I asked. “We landed in their place like a conquering army, bearing gifts like diplomats. I own the land and the house, of course, but not to them. To them, this is their world.”
“You’re a sensitive man,” she said.
“Don’t try and handle me.”
“Well, you are.”
“Just say it, wife. Speak your wishes.”
She took a single, deep breath that filled her chest, driving it up and out. With Simona in her lap, I realized those gorgeous tits would never be used to feed a baby.
“What if…” she paused for another breath. “What if we stayed for awhile?”
“Awhile?” I crossed ankle over knee, settling in. She knew we had responsibilities in California better than anyone.
“We could fix up the house around them. And you can actually do what you said you were going to do.”
“Which is?”
“Talk to someone. But this time, you talk to them about leaving the children alone. You tell them they’re under your protection, and if they’re hurt in any way…”
She trailed off.
“Threats only work if you intend to carry them out, Contessa.”