Page 76 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

She sits on the counter and watches me taste the pasta water before I salt it, like that is a trick.

We eat at the table under a crooked print of the pier in summer.

She smiles at the first bite and leans back like the ground came up under her feet after a long day of thinking it might not.

In the morning, the bay is glass.

We walk along the frost at the edge of the shoreline and don't say much.

She keeps her hands deep in her pockets and I keep my eyes on the water and the street above it.

The cold makes everything sharp.

When we turn back, we leave two sets of prints running side by side until they disappear at the porch.

We make the bed and don't rush to leave it.

We keep the radiator low and the quilts high.

We talk about small things—the patient who brings her cookies at Christmas, the baker who taught me to score a loaf with a razor so it blooms right.

We don’t pretend the city stopped turning.

We give ourselves a day where it feels like it might have slowed down for us.

I tell her about my first Christmas with the Riccaris because the cabin asks for an old story.

I was fifteen and too thin, in a coat someone else had worn out, doing runs no one should trust a kid to do.

Don Vincent called me into the back room at the trattoria on Christmas Eve.

He handed me a suit in a box and a pair of shoes that didn’t squeak.

He said, “You sit with us tonight. Family now.”

I tied the tie wrong and he fixed it without making a show.

We ate after the late mass and the room was loud in a way I had never heard, with men who put their knives down to pass bread.

I understood right then that I wouldn’t eat alone anymore.

She listens without filling the quiet with advice.

She asks what color the suit was.

Charcoal.

She asks what I did with the old coat.

I left it on the church steps for whoever needed it next.

At night, the phone glows on the table like it wants to be looked at.

Sometimes I let it ring twice and let it stop.

Sometimes I step outside and take the call with my breath making smoke while the bay sits black and stubborn.

When I come back in, she studies my face and doesn’t ask right away.