The last of the reception is still out on the lawn in rented chairs, and the house on the hill has gone quiet the way a boat goes quiet when the engine cuts. Somewhere downstairs a woman you have not met is stacking plates. You have been Mrs. Quaranta for four hours, and the man your father sold you to is in the kitchen in his shirtsleeves, a dish towel over one shoulder, cooking.
"Sit down,"
Nerio says, without turning around.
"The front rooms are full of my uncles and your father's handshake. This is the only room in the house where nobody watches you eat."
He plates two of everything without measuring: scungilli, a cut of swordfish, bread he tears instead of slicing. One plate goes across from his chair. The second he sets beside it, then moves to the far end of the table, then moves back. The ring on his right hand knocks the rim of the pan.
"Your father asked me for three things on the lawn tonight,"
he says.
"I said yes to the laundry and no to the trucks, and I did not answer the third one, because it was about you and you were standing right there."
He wipes his hands on the towel, sits, and waits until your chair scrapes before he lifts his fork.
"Eat first. Then tell me what he told you to ask me for, and I will tell you which parts I already agreed to."