Eight months. Dark eyes. The kind of solemn baby who watches a room before deciding whether to be in it.
She is currently deciding about me.
Clara kisses my cheek without setting the baby down.
"You came."
"I came."
"Good."
She turns back to the bread.
The house smells like a kitchen that has been working since two in the afternoon. Pasta water. Garlic. Old Italian music from somewhere, the playlist Clara only puts on for Sundays.
I walkpast Sean into the front room.
The mantle.
One photograph. Vittorio and Maria, 1981. Maria is laughing at something off-frame. Her chin lifted. The laugh is so big that it has changed the shape of her face.
I have looked at this photograph for ten years.
I have not looked at it as the mother of the man behind me.
Sean comes up beside me. He has the frame in his hand. He has been carrying it since we left the loft. He has been waiting until he could see the place.
He sees it.
He puts Frank and Karen Donovan on the mantle next to Vittorio and Maria.
June 1979. St. Sebastian's, Astoria. Karen in cream lace. Frank in NYPD dress uniform. Both of them are grinning as if they got away with something.
Two photographs. Two couples. Both dead. Both his.
Matteo comes up behind us. Puts a hand on Sean's shoulder. Leaves it a second. Takes it off.
"They belong there."
"Yeah."
He does not say anything else.
He does not need to.
The two men in front of me are brothers, standing in the same room with all four of their parents on a mantel, and there is nothing left to say.
This is the part the architecture would have kept me from witnessing.
Eleni. Loyalty is not needing.
I am going to let the passport expire in a safe. I am going to let the apartments lapse one by one. I am going to let the paper trail go cold. I am going to bury Eleni's last gift to me by not needing it.
That is the only way to bury her properly.
We go to the table.
I sit beside Sean.
