Page 33 of Broken Trust

Rosa yawns and I grab her, as she wrestles me wanting to be free again. I set the papers down on the mattress and hold her close, rocking her until she drifts off.

“It's just you and me now, kid,” I whisper into her hair.

She sighs in her sleep and curls her fist around my finger, and in the fading light, with the nonna next door shouting at her game show, I finally let myself cry for the first time since the disastrous baby shower in the garden.

19

GIA

At half past five on opening night, I'm hiding in the walk-in fridge, and I'm not even a little bit ashamed of it.

It's the only place in the building where nobody can find me, and the cold is the only thing stopping my hands from shaking. I'm wedged between the crates of zucchini flowers and the tubs of fresh ricotta, breathing in basil and damp stone, trying to remember what on earth made me think I could do this. Through the door I can hear the waiters setting places and Nella arguing with the florist, who's convinced twelve candles on a table for two is romantic and not a fire hazard.

Three months of plaster dust and splinters and fourteen-hour days. Every euro I own, plus a few I've borrowed from Nella that she swears I don't have to pay back. In ninety minutes we flip the sign, and the whole valley gets to decide whether I'm a real chef or a woman who got her heart broken and lost her mind.

The fridge door opens and Matteo pokes his head in, grinning.

“Gia, what are you doing in here? I've been looking all over for you,” he says. “Come taste the ragù before I ruin it. I think it needs something, and I'm not touching your Nonna's recipe without permission.”

Matteo came up from Naples in April, after a friend of Fiorenzo's told him about a crazy woman opening a restaurant in a village with more goats than people. He's six foot three, with tattoos running down both arms and a laugh you can hear from the other side of the square, and he cooks like his own grandmother is standing behind him with a wooden spoon. I hired him the day he made me a plate of cacio e pepe so good I had to sit down on an upturned crate to finish it.

“I'm coming,” I tell him. “I just needed a minute.”

“You can hide after service. Right now, I need you.”

He holds the door open, and warm air rushes in around my ankles as I follow him out. It's loud and bright and full of steam, all six burners going and the dishwasher humming, and my blue-and-white tiles are gleaming under the lights like they were laid yesterday instead of forty years ago. Someone has taped the menu to the wall above the pass, and seeing my own dishes printed there in black ink makes my throat go tight.

Matteo hands me a spoon. The ragù is rich and dark and slow, with the sweetness of the onions coming through right at the end. It's Nonna's recipe, from the tin Dante brought back in that cardboard box, and I've pinned her card above my station where I can see it all night. It's stained with fifty years of her fingerprints, the ink faded to brown, her handwriting running off the edge where she ran out of room. I rest my hand against it for a second, the way you'd touch an old photograph.

I can almost hear her. You see, cara? People always come back to the ones who feed them.

“It needs salt,” I say, and my voice only wobbles a little.

“That's what I thought, but I wanted you to say it.” Matteo winks and reaches for the jar. “Go wash your face. You look like you've seen a ghost.”

Nella comes in through the back, then stops beside the stove and takes one look at me in my new whites, with my name stitched in blue thread over the pocket, and her eyes fill up.

“Please don't cry,” I beg her. “Because if you go, I'll go, and then we'll be a pair of wrecks with the whole village watching.”

“I'm not crying. I've got something in my eye.” She sniffs and fans her face with her hand. “Both eyes, actually. It's the onions.”

“Nella, you've been out front all afternoon.”

She laughs and pulls me into a hug so tight it squeezes the air out of me, and then she straightens her dress, squares her shoulders, and goes out to open the doors.

By eight o'clock, every table is full, and I don't have a second left to be nervous.

The tickets come in faster than I can read them, and I plate and wipe and taste and shout out orders until my voice goes hoarse. Whenever I glance through the pass, I catch a glimpse of the dining room glowing with candlelight, packed with faces I know. Fiorenzo has brought his whole family, all eleven of them, and they're tucking napkins into their collars in the corner. The Bianchi sisters have grabbed the table by the window and are fighting over the last piece of focaccia. Avvocato Ferri is there with his mother, and old Signora Pace is weeping into her tiramisu, telling anyone who'll listen that it tastes exactly like the one they served at her husband's funeral, which I choose to take as a compliment.

Around nine, Nella rushes back with an empty tray on her hip and her cheeks bright pink.

“Gia, come here,” she hisses. “There's a man at table six from the newspaper in Bologna, and he just ordered a second plate of your ravioli. Critics never do that.”

My heart does a somersault. “Did he say anything about it?”

“He asked me who taught you to cook like this.” She grabs my face in both hands and kisses my forehead so hard she leaves a lipstick mark. “I told him God and your grandmother, in that order.”

She's gone again in a flash, and I'm laughing so much that Matteo has to take the pan from me before I drop it.