Nadia, dry: "Three quarters, technically."
I look at her.
"Frank's mother was from Bari. I read the file."
Clara laughs. "Welcome to Sunday. Get used to her."
The penthouse is warm with the smell of a kitchen that has been working since two in the afternoon. Pasta water. Garlic. Old Italian music from somewhere.
A small, dark-haired girl comes around the corner with a stuffed rabbit. She stops. She looks at me. She tilts her head.
"You look like Uncle Matteo."
I drop to one knee. "I have been told."
"Are you also my uncle?"
"I am."
"Okay." She hands me the rabbit and runs back to the kitchen.
I stand up holding a stuffed rabbit. I look at Nadia. She is fighting not to laugh. She loses.
Luca isat the stove in an apron with flour on it. The Luca who clears courtyards in five seconds is wearing an apron and stirring a pot.
Matteo is at the counter with a glass of red wine. Hair longer than I have seen it. He looks like a different man from the one in the hospital room three weeks ago, and he is the same man; the difference is the part I have been waiting to see.
"How was Kostas?" Matteo says.
"He's gone."
"Good," Luca says.
"Yeah," Matteo says.
"Good." Alessandro, from the living room.
Three words. The family's response to Kostas Stavros's death. They go back to what they were doing.
The man who took me is dead, and the family that lost me has acknowledged it in three words and moved on.
We have the people we have.
Luca looks at the rabbit under my arm. "Sofia gave you that?"
"Yes."
"She tests people," Matteo says. "The ones who keep the rabbit are the ones she talks to at dinner."
I put the rabbit more firmly under my arm.
"Welcome to the family, Detective."
Alessandro ison the couch with Sofia climbing on him, arm in a sling, looking ten years younger than he did at the war council three weeks ago.
Alessandro asks, "She gave you the rabbit?"
"Yes."
