Chapter 6

"Allora, Nico." Joey swirled his wine. "All week you're playing house. What are you doing about the girl on Lake Shore?"

Nobody at the table looked at me. As far as they knew, I'd just heard a man say something about the wine.

Nico didn't look at me either. He kept peeling his clementine and answered in the same easy Italian.

"Days with June. Nights with Tessa."

The table broke up laughing.

He said it the way he'd order a steak.

"Finally," Carmine wheezed, wiping his eyes. "Thirty years I've been telling this kid. A man like us, one woman? It's not natural. Every time we tried to set him up, no, no, I've got June." He slapped the table. "And look at him now."

"Look at him now," Joey agreed. "Not just a girl. A pregnant girl."

The clementine segment stopped halfway to the napkin.

Then Nico set it down by my hand, the same as all the others.

"Your old man know?" somebody asked.

"Not yet."

"Salvatore's gonna light candles at St. Anthony's. A Castellano grandson, finally." Carmine shook his head. "Five years married and nothing from the wife, eh? Good thing somebody's doing the job."

More laughter. Nico didn't laugh. He didn't stop it, either.

"You got a name yet?" Joey asked.

"If it's a boy?" Nico shrugged, like it was obvious. "Salvatore. After Pop."

The table nodded. Of course. First son takes the paternal grandfather's name. That's how it's done in every Italian family from Palermo to Taylor Street.

On our honeymoon, lying on a beach in Positano, he'd traced circles on my stomach and said the exact same thing. Our first boy's Salvatore, June. That's how it's done. I'd laughed and told him his father would never forgive me if I gave him a granddaughter first.

Now the name was going to her.

"So what's she got?" Joey leaned in, grinning. "Must be something, to make Nico Castellano break his own rule."

Nico took his time. He wiped his fingers on a napkin.

"Non ne ho mai abbastanza."

I can't get enough of her.

The whole table howled.

Then Nico lifted his eyes, just slightly, and the laughter died like somebody had cut a wire.

"Keep it down," he said, still in Italian. "Not in front of my wife."

"Relax." Joey waved a hand. "She doesn't understand a word. We've been doing this in front of her for years."

Something warm settled over my shoulders.

Nico's jacket. He tucked it around me like a blanket, his hand lingering on my arm.

"You're shaking, piccola. Too cold in here? I'll get them to turn the air down."

I looked at him. His face was soft. Worried. Exactly the face he'd worn every day for seven years.

"What were you talking about?"

He smiled and smoothed my hair back. "Business. Boring stuff. The old guys still do it the old way when it's business. Habit." He kissed my temple. "You're bored out of your mind, huh? I'll make them switch."

He thought I couldn't understand him.

He had no idea who had taught me.

His mother was the one who asked for me.

The last year she was alive, Lucia Castellano wanted me at her bedside every afternoon. Not her son. Not her husband. Me, the girl from nowhere that Salvatore never wanted at his table.

"They'll talk around you your whole life," she told me, the first day. Her voice was paper-thin, but her grip on my wrist was iron. "At Sunday dinner. At christenings. At funerals. Right in front of your face. Unless you understand them."

So for eleven months, she taught me. Verbs. Curses. The Sicilian underneath the Italian. The things men say when they think the women can't follow.

She made me promise not to tell Nico.

"A wife needs one thing her husband doesn't know about," she said. "Trust me, cara. Just one."

I'd kept that promise for four years. I'd never once needed it.

Until tonight.

I understood every word.

I understood that the calls in the garage were her. That the Maybach rolling down the drive at two in the morning with its headlights off was rolling toward her. That she was carrying his child, and his father would light candles for it.

I understood that the name he'd whispered to me on a beach in Positano now belonged to a baby I would never meet, growing inside a woman who'd smiled at me in my own living room.

I understood that he couldn't get enough.

And I understood the worst part. The part that turned my hands to ice under his jacket.

Every man at that table knew.

Joey, who'd been best man at my wedding. Carmine, who pinched my cheek every Christmas and called me bella. Paulie, standing by the door right now with his hands folded. Sal, laughing into his fist that day by the hedge.

All of them had known for months. They'd kissed my cheek at christenings. Toasted me at anniversaries. And talked about her right over my head, in a language they were sure I'd never understand.

We've been doing this in front of her for years.

I picked up a clementine segment, put it in my mouth, and smiled at Nico.

It tasted like nothing at all.

Three days.

I'd been the only one at this table who didn't know the joke.

Now I was the only one who knew how it ended.