Page 125 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

The paint is right.

The curtains are wrong on purpose.

The lock is newer than the door.

We pull to the curb and take the stoop slowly.

I scan the line of roofs, then the street, then the glass.

Rafe steps inside and clears the hall.

He nods.

I open the door and let Elisa in first.

The front room has a couch, a table, a rug that keeps footsteps honest.

The kitchen doesn’t try to impress anyone.

The windows face a brick wall and a scrap of sky.

Safe. Quiet. Useful.

She touches the edge of the table with two fingers the way she did the first time she walked into the bakery after a long night.

“So this is it,” she says.

“This is it,” I say. “Your shelf is that one. Towel hooks are behind the bathroom door. The second drawer is yours. And the bedroom.”

She turns.

“The bedroom?”

“Beds are made for two,” I say. “If you want your own, I’ll sleep on the couch. I won’t take offense.”

She looks like she’s about to argue for the sport of it and then thinks better of it.

“We’ll see,” she says. “Show me the exits.”

I show her the back stairs to the tiny yard, the basement hatch to the alley that ends at Court, the lockbox behind the boiler with a spare key and a phone that only calls three numbers.

She shakes her head and almost smiles.

The almost is enough for now.

“Pack tonight,” I say. “The first move is the small move. Toothbrush, scrubs, the sweater you reach for, the book you won’t read, the picture of your mother. We go back to your apartment together later with a car and a list. Rafe and Tino take the stairs before us and the stairs after.”

“My plants,” she says.

“We’ll bring your plants,” I say. “All of them.”

She takes out her phone.

“I need to call my mother.”

“Put it on speaker,” I say. “Say you’re staying with a friend after a long shift. Use the word ‘lemons’ if you can talk. Use ‘oranges’ if you can’t. If she says ‘tomatoes’, it means she wants to see you and she doesn’t like who you’re with.”

“You made that up right now.”