I went to the boathouse at nine on Sunday morning and did not tell my husband. If Rafe knew, Enzo would be gone before I reached the bottom stair, and I would never learn whose boat my family had paid for.
Enzo sat on an upturned crate in yesterday's shirt. The boathouse was all diesel and wet rope, and the cigarette in his fingers had burned down to the knuckle without his noticing.
"Ferro. Alone?"
"You asked."
"Talk first. Then I decide."
"No. I talk first." I stayed by the door. "Only one person was inside the house the night the Accord burned. He's sitting on a crate. Tell me everything you saw and Rafe never hears it from me."
He laughed, and it cracked in the middle. "You're bluffing."
"I audit. I don't bluff."
The cigarette fell. He ground it out and kept grinding after it was dead.
"I followed him," he said. "October tenth. I was sure he was selling us to your family, piece by piece, and I wanted to watch him do it. My badge opened the Pier 9 gate at 11:47. You've seen the invoice, I know you have."
"Eleven minutes before."
"I stood by the fuel shed, in the dark. There was a sound at 11:58, and I'm not describing it to you." His jaw worked. "A man in a gray coat came down the boat steps. Dropped into a skiff, small, white, blue stripe along the side. No lights. He was gone by 11:59. Then Rafe's headlights at the gate."
"You never said."
"A Corvino on that pier means war! I leaned on Sergio to forget my car. I burned the Accord because I was so angry I had to burn something." He wiped his face with his whole sleeve. "And I have seen that skiff before. Last spring. On blocks at Aldo Pace's cousin's boatyard in Kessick."
Aldo's cousin's yard.
I had found the invoice myself, a week ago, in Papa's ledger. Wednesday, October eighth, two days before. Harbor Marine Repair. Forty thousand dollars. Santa Lucia hull work, in Aldo's square capitals, and I had let it go because Aldo's hand was a thing you trusted. Papa had told me, weeks ago, that Aldo sold my photographs of the Corvino schedule to a Kessick crew. I had cried over that. I had defended him.
He taught me to ride a bike on Alder Street, one hand on the seat, the other pushing peppermints at me when I fell.
"Ferro," Enzo said. "You've gone white."
"I'm fine." I wasn't. I was adding a column and the total was a man I loved. "Thank you."
I would not tell Rafe yet. I would not tell anyone. Paper's in the safe, kid, Aldo had said, and today was Sunday, and I was required at that table at five.
Rafe drove me to Alder Street himself. He stopped at the curb and did not turn off the engine.
"You smell like diesel," he said.
"Serafina let me help with the bread."
He looked at me a long moment. Then he let it go, which was worse. "Call me. For any reason."
My father toasted Nico at the head of the table with a glass of Mamma's good wine. His hand shook. "My son," he said, and could not finish, and wept in front of all of us, and I wept with him. I pitied him with my whole chest. He had trusted Aldo for forty years. Tuesday was Mamma's anniversary Mass, and he'd have to bury another piece of his family before he'd finished the first.
Aldo pressed a peppermint into my palm as I passed his chair. "Your brother hated these," he said to the tablecloth. He did not look up. I put it in my pocket and smiled and thought: you taught me to lie, so I'm good at it.
At coffee I said I needed the powder room, and went the other way.
In the study, Mamma's painting of the harbor hung where it always had. Behind it, the safe.
Nico had taught me locks. He had never taught me this one.
I tried his birthday. Nothing. I tried mine. Nothing. My thumb was shaking on the keypad, so I stopped, breathed, and typed the only date left in the house that mattered. June third. Mamma's.
0603.
The door swung open.
An envelope, a clipped pair of papers. On top, the Harbor Marine Repair invoice, forty thousand dollars. Under Aldo's capitals, in my father's slanted hand, two words I had seen on five years of expense approvals: Approved C.F.
A note was clipped to it, in Aldo's capitals.
M. LAZZARO. HALF BEFORE, HALF AFTER.
Under the papers lay a phone, cased in black rubber. I knew the crack in the corner. Nico's. The police had never had it.
I put it on my father's desk charger, because that is what you do with a dead phone, and it lit. It wanted a passcode. I typed 0211, and it opened.
My birthday. His passcode was my birthday.
I did not stop to feel that. I opened the messages, October tenth.
Nico, 11:16 p.m.: "Meeting R.C. on Pier 9 at midnight. He's signing. Come sign with us, Papa. We end this tonight."
Papa, 11:20 p.m.: "I'm proud of you. I'll be there at midnight. Wait for me."
Nico, 11:21 p.m.: "Thank you, Papa."
Papa had told the Table, and me, that he never knew where Nico was going that night.
I read it again, to see if the numbers would come out different. Midnight. Pier 9. Wait for me. He had known the place and the hour. He had signed for the boat. Then he had stood at my brother's grave and cried, and I had held his arm.
The numbers came out the same.
"Put it back on the charger, Livia," my father said from the doorway. "It's the last thing he ever said to me."