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ON THE WAY home from the inquest Monday evening Anna went over the long list of things she needed to do, all of which involved other people. Aunt Quinlan and Mrs. Lee would want to hear about Staten Island and about the inquest, Jack’s parents would be expecting them to call after supper, and once there, his sisters would raise the subject of the new house. Anna was curious, she could admit to herself, about Jack’s mother. It was odd to look forward to and dread something at the same time, but what she found oddest of all was this idea of herself as a daughter-in-law. As someone with parents, when for all these years she had been without. Anna realized that she had always assumed she wouldn’t marry, specifically because she had trouble imagining herself with a family that included parents and brothers and sisters. And now she had all of that.
But what she wanted to do was slip between cool sheets and fall asleep in a breeze from an open window. She wanted to sleep for days on end, and to wake up when the whole sorry business of the inquest and the missing boys had been resolved. She wanted sleep in order to put Mrs. Stone’s testimony out of her head, and at the same time she wanted to bind all those words together into a club and hit every man in the room over the head with it. Because they hadn’t really understood the story behind the story, and what Mrs. Stone was trying to tell them about Janine Campbell’s life. Mrs. Stone had called herself plain-speaking and blunt, but she had wrapped every observation in the language of well-brought-up women, with the result that none of the men had any real sense of the anger and frustration that drove Janine Campbell.
She wanted to sleep, and she wanted Jack sleeping beside her. Instead she had to resign herself to an evening of talking, one that started over supper. Then Sophie joined them, and Anna felt much better. She had come especially to hear about Vittorio Russo, something Jack’s parents made possible when they took the little girls off to be fed by his aunt Philomena and coddled by a house full of Mezzanottes.
“And to speak Italian,” Mrs. Mezzanotte had explained. “They miss the language.”
For once Margaret didn’t seem to mind letting them go off without her, but then she wanted to hear about the youngest Mezzanotte boy as well.
Jack told the story in a very ordered, very complete manner that struck Anna as unlike him, until she realized that this was how he presented a case to his superiors, the men who judged his performance and made decisions about his career. It was a change from the way stories were usually told around Aunt Quinlan’s table, but then it was a serious subject.
“He’s a beautiful child,” Anna said when he had finished. “Dearly loved. The picture of rude good health.”
At the startled look on Jack’s face aunt Quinlan laughed. “A family turn of phrase,” she said. “Sophie’s great-grandmother used it for children who were thriving and content.”
“Then it fits in his case,” Jack said.
He turned to Margaret, who had been silent throughout the story.
“You’ve spent more time with the girls than anybody. Do you have any thoughts on how to proceed?”
She took a moment to pat her mouth dry with her napkin, and then she cleared her throat. Margaret appreciated good manners and respectful gestures, and Jack gave her both. In return she answered with more candor than Anna would have anticipated.
“I do have an opinion,” she said. “But I’m afraid I’ll offend you, as a Catholic.”
Jack said, “I’m not Catholic. I was never baptized, but that’s a longer story for another time. Go on and say what you’re thinking.”
Margaret studied him for a moment. Anna could read her expression very easily: she was fighting the urge to ask him for details. Margaret needed to put him in a box marked Lutheran or Protestant or Baptist; it would never occur to her that he might be something other than Christian. But Jack respected her opinion in the matter of the Russo children, and so she restrained her curiosity.
“From everything I’ve read about the Church of Rome, I can’t imagine that they’d allow a child to be taken away from a good Catholic home to be brought up in such an unconventional household as this one. It could take months or years and might even go to court, and that without much hope of success. Worst of all, the girls will have to live through it all. They are just starting to really come into their own, but this—this would set them back. The knowledge that their brother is nearby but cut off from them would be more than Rosa could cope with.”