Chapter 2

When Salvatore picked up the phone again, there was something almost grudging in his praise.

"This tie does suit the shirt. I'll wear it for the sit-down tonight."

A pause. The line hummed with the quiet of his study, that room where men learned to hold their breath. "Adriana."

"Send me your address. I'll have someone deliver the custom piece to you. It's the anniversary gift."

But I refused.

"No need. My taste is different from Vittoria Rinaldi's."

Vittoria was Salvatore's first love.

After the Rinaldi Family fell and she came back with nothing, she was installed at his side as his personal courier.

From his schedules to the smallest tribute, she handled every arrangement Salvatore made.

When Salvatore heard me speak her name, his voice dropped to the temperature of a cellar.

"Who do you think you are? Don't put Vittoria in the same breath as you."

Hearing that, I smiled to myself.

"You're right. She's far better than me. That's exactly why I told you not to waste good things on me."

My reply left Salvatore with nothing.

I looked at the clock on the wall. Its ticking was the only sound.

Then I continued. "Have Vittoria arrange a day. We need to go to the courthouse as soon as possible."

"Text me when the date is set. No need to call."

With that I lowered the phone, ready to hang up, but Salvatore spoke first.

He said, "Matteo is next to me. He wants to talk to you."

But before Matteo could get a word out, I hung up.

Just like the day he blacklisted me without a moment's hesitation.

I set the phone down, took Rosaria's hand, and watched television with her while she hummed some old Neapolitan thing under her breath.

A week passed.

While I was waiting for someone in the hotel salon, a call came from a number I didn't know.

It was Matteo's teacher.

He told me Matteo had gotten into a fight with a classmate at school.

The cause of it was that the classmate had heard something and asked Matteo, in front of the whole class, why his parents had severed their union.

But I told the teacher, "No."

"That isn't a rumor. Matteo's father and I did divorce."

"Custody of Matteo isn't in my hands. Please have his father deal with this matter."

At my words the teacher, embarrassed, told me Matteo had given only my number.

I sighed and asked him to put me on speaker.

Knowing the injured boy and his parents were all present, I said calmly to Matteo, "Matteo."

"You hit someone. That's on you. When you do something wrong, you get punished. Isn't that the principle you and your father have always lived by?"

"And please don't call me again, no matter what happens to you from now on. The same goes for your father."

"Matteo, you need to remember. I'm not your mother anymore."

When I finished, I hung up, then smiled and waved to my best friend Francesca Bruno and her daughter Chiara as I switched the phone to Do Not Disturb.

When I was carrying Matteo, I used to imagine the child inside me would be a girl.

Even when he came into the world a boy, I still treated him as my treasure and gave him everything I had.

Before he turned six, Matteo would plant little saplings in the back garden for the cartoon cats that had died.

He would sneak a small red flower into my hair after school.

But later Salvatore began taking him up to the old man's house, again and again.

After he turned eight, Matteo stopped crying and stopped liking to smile.

He came to dislike Rosaria's home. The glass towers in the city, he decided, were better than the old stone houses out in the hills.

He even complained to me once. "Mamma."

"You grew up in a place like this? No wonder Nonna always looks down on you."

The cheesecake Chiara pushed toward my mouth pulled me back from the memory.

Watching me eat it, Francesca laughed.

"Adriana, now that you've taken Chiara's bribe, you have to come to her school sports meet and cheer for her."