"That's a yes from her." He looks at Nadia. "Counselor."
"Don."
"You brought a wine not from the Moretti cellar."
"I did."
"That is brave."
"It is. I am brave."
He smiles. "Open it."
She goes to the kitchen. Alessandro looks at me.
"Sit down, brother."
I sit. Sofia moves into my lap before I have finished sitting down. She takes the rabbit back, holds it against her chest, and settles against my arm without a word.
Alessandro, quietly: "She does not sit on people who are not family."
I look down at the small dark head against my arm. I look at Alessandro.
"Welcome home."
Dinner is the ritual.
Clara has put out an extra chair at the end opposite Alessandro. Empty.
"Mom's chair," Matteo says beside me.
"Always?"
"Always. You can sit in it if you want."
"No."
He passes me the bread.
The carbonara is what Luca said it would be. The wine is Nadia's. Luca gave it the single nod she has just told me is the highest praise he gives. Halfway through dinner, her hand finds my thigh under the table. I do not look at her. She does not look at me. I put my hand over hers, and we keep eating.
Late in the dinner, Alessandro tells a Maria story. Something she did when he was twelve. A neighbor, a casserole dish, and a misunderstanding about the recipe. Operational. Deadpan. The Moretti way.
I am the only one at the table who did not know this woman.
When Alessandro finishes, a small quiet follows Maria's story. The brothers do not fill it. I fill it.
I say something dry. Something Queens cop. Something comparing Mom's move with the casserole dish to a thing Karen Donovan once did with a Tupperware and a Christmas ham.
Alessandro laughs.
A real laugh.
The laugh of a man who has not laughed at a Maria story in fifteen years because the people who could make him laugh after she died were only her and his brothers, and she was gone, and his brothers were two.
Matteo, quietly, so only I hear: "That is the first time he has laughed at a Maria story in fifteen years."
Alessandro, hearing: "That was a Mom joke."
