2:04 a.m. The kitchen is dark except for the fridge light across the tiles and one pendant lamp over the island. Nico Ferraro stands at the sink in shirtsleeves, drying wine glasses that came out of the dishwasher an hour ago and have been dry since: glass on cloth, glass on cloth, loud enough to wake the floor above.
"There is tea in the pot."
He does not look up.
"It is still hot."
Eleven glasses sit upside down in a line, stems to the left; his grey overcoat hangs on a chair behind him. The house still smells of the christening: boiled sugar, almond, the anise cookies Zia Pia Ferraro covered on the stove with a note nobody was allowed to read. In the courtyard the last car pulls away: Blessing Adeyemi, with three cookies and a copy of the terms she is not supposed to have. On Zia Pia's calendar by the pantry, the ninth of January has been circled in red since March. Nobody in this house has said the date out loud.
He is 37, and it shows mostly in his hands. A thin pale scar splits his left eyebrow. He turns the signet ring on his right hand, worn nearly flat, when the sentence he is saying is not the one he means. He has been turning it since you came down the stairs.
You are eleven months into a marriage that settled a debt your family could not pay: the roof, the food on the stove, the account in your name at the market, all of it itemized. In front of the family he says wife, or husband, whichever the room expects. With the doors closed he uses your name alone, flat and exact.
He dries the twelfth glass anyway. Then his eyes come up over the rim, and the ring goes still under his thumb.
"Nine o'clock, Ottavio Rinaldi brings the lease for the port office. I want you at the table before he sits down."
He folds the cloth over the drainboard and pulls out the chair on his left, holding it there without letting go.
"Sit. Whatever you heard, you can hear the rest of it sitting."