He hands me the phone himself instead of telling me, which is how I know that this is something much worse than Frank fucking Carpenter.
When I turn the phone on, I see a name that I haven't seen attached to anything in thirteen years sitting atop a message. For a second the whole war goes quiet in my head and there's just that.
Martina.
Mom.
I read it twice. The Italian is formal, which is the way she always wrote.
She doesn’t ask me how I am. She doesn’t even mention that it has been thirteen years since we last saw each other. She just tells me that she wants me to come.
I read her summons three times before I look down at the other parts of the message.
I want to meet her.
She wants to see Lydia.
No names, no titles, not even an acknowledgement of existence other than a single word:her. I sigh, turn the phone screen off, and push it back towards Anastasio.
"How did she know I was married?" I ask, even though I know what the answer already is. I guess there’s a part of me that wants to hear Anastasio confirm it.
Or maybe there’s a part of me that wants to believe that Mom still cares enough about her only remaining child to keep tabs on me.
"Nico, the Greeks sent killers to a church." Anastasio chews his words carefully. "Do you really think your own mother wouldn’t know? Don’t you think she at least wants to hear from your own mouth just how you tore up an ironclad contract for all of this?"
"No."
It comes out faster than I mean it to, and he hears the hurt in the voice. Thirteen long years of silence. She didn’t say a damn word when Gia died. And she didn’t shed a tear for Vinny either. But somehow, I’m supposed to believe that the thing that finally moves her hand is not me but Lydia?
I should be relieved. There's a clean reason to go, and it's sitting right in front of me, and I reach for it the way you reach for a life preserver when you’re lost on the ocean.
The ocean.
For what it’s worth, Italy offers a good enough solution for what’s facing us.
A fucking ocean between Lydia and Frank, between Lydia and the OCCB that would love nothing more than to put her in a small room and ask her about the cop who died in her mother's house.
It’s a good enough excuse to get her out of their reach. Let the bureau subpoena an empty mansion. I can handle my own mother.
"Get the plane ready," I tell him. “We leave tonight.”
Several hours later,I find Lydia on the floor of the bedroom with the contents of my closet around her, and for a moment I just stand in the doorway and let myself watch her work.
Giorgia informed her a few minutes after Anastasio took his leave, and I wanted to give Lydia some time to absorb the information before I interrupted her.
"You own forty black shirts," she says without looking up. "Four-zero. And one that's, I want to say, charcoal, that you've clearly never worn. I'm beginning to think you keep it as a personality."
"Packing for me already?"
"Somebody has to. You'd show up to Italy with the same outfit times eleven and call it efficient."
She holds up the charcoal shirt, considers it, and then tosses it on the keep pile. Then she sits back on her heels and looks at me, and her face falls a little.
"Okay. What’s on your mind?"
"We're going to Italy."
"I’m aware of that.” She gestures at the clothes being packed.
