“She’s been in Sorrento,” Daniel said compassionately. “In hiding. She wanted to get her son away from the mob.”
The woman ran into Antonio’s arms, and I stared as he embraced her, pressing his nose to her hair. They spoke in Italian, rushing through words I couldn’t understand. He touched her face and kissed her cheek.
“I went looking for you and found two Spinellis on a manifest from Naples. I thought it was a ruse you’d set up. But it wasn’t. Obviously. It makes me kind of almost believe your story.”
Antonio got on one knee to speak to the boy, his nephew. I’d never seen a man so happy. Even in that gritty box of a room, he shone with contentment, as if he was where he belonged and with the people he was meant for. His family. I knew then that I had to go back to Italy with him. If I was in jail twenty years, thirty for shooting Paulie, I’d meet him under the olive trees at sixty. He needed to be home with his family, and I’d be with him, no questions asked.
“The only thing was the names were so close,” Daniel said, leaning on the mirror, watching me. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” Why wouldn’t I be? I was witnessing Antonio speaking softly to his nephew as if the child was his own son. “Close to what? The names?”
“To you. Antonin and Tina Spinelli. It seemed like a ridiculous subterfuge.”
Wait.
Something was wrong.
“Tina?” I asked.
“Short for Valentina.”
I rummaged around the dark corners of my mind, looking under memories and details. I was snapped out of it when the little boy slapped Antonio’s face and screamed at him in Italian. Valentina pulled the boy back and held him, her eyes welling up with an apology.
“Valentina shortens to Nella?”
Daniel didn’t answer right away. He waited until I’d turned from the scene to look at him leaning against the mirror, eyes cast down. He fidgeted with his fingernail, gave it a quick bite. Stopped himself.
“Daniel. What is it?”
“Tink, I don’t know how to say this.”
“Don’t call me that.” Before the sentence was even out of my mouth, I uncovered the name from a mental file box of things that were precious to Antonio in the past.
Daniel let me know that what was written in that file was right. “Valentina is his wife.”
I thought, in that moment, Daniel would be a vindictive dick. But he wasn’t. Not with my hand covering my mouth and my eyes filling up.
Over.
Everything was over.
“Theresa. I’m sorry.”
His apology was a backdrop to the scene in the interview room. Antonio spoke softly to her, Valentina… his wife… as she held her…. no… their son. He put his arm around her. What was her scent? Did he remember it? Even with his eyes closed, he looked as though everything was coming back to him.
He was home, and I was on the other side of a wall.
nine.
antonio
d had a life once. I was a family lawyer. I practiced keeping families together because I’d never had one. Valentina had married that man. She married an optimist with a future who had escaped a life in the shadows. She married endless potential? strength, contentment.
The man she was married to the day before she died was a monster. She’d watched me become everything she loathed, everything my mother had tried to save me from. Valentina watched me fail and drew away away away. I didn’t even realize she was a stranger until her car exploded over the hills of Naples and I didn’t know where she was driving to.
The despair. There was nothing like it. No experience in my imaginings. No anguish so great I could kill man after man to eradicate it. But I dampened it. I buried that optimistic man and all his possibilities and I steeped myself in what I was to become.
An animal. A hell-bound murderer.