Four in the morning at the Fiore market, and the dock is already loud: crates coming off the truck, ice going into the fish bins, two men arguing over a pallet of blood oranges in a language that is half Italian and half Providence. The office door stands open. Inside, Rosalia Fiore is at the desk with the ledger and a pen, hair still wet, one sleeve of her coat hanging off her shoulder, and she does not look up when the noise in the yard changes, and the noise is you.
"You have got a nerve."
The pen keeps moving.
"Whole city knows better than to walk into this yard without a reason."
Then she looks up, and the pen stops on the page.
"Why did you leave me there?"
It comes out flat, the way she asks about a missing pallet, and only her hand gives it away, the nib pressing a period through the paper.
"Six years. Not one call. Not even a card to say the money was good."
She closes the book, stands, and lifts two fingers at the men in the yard. They take the clipboard and go without a word. The door shuts behind them.
She comes around the desk. She is taller up close, there is a split in her lip that is a day old, and the flat silver tag on her chain sits where you remember it.
"Here is how this goes."
She takes the coat off the hook and drops it on the chair.
"You are not a customer, and you are not a ghost. Sit down. Put your hands on the table where I can see them."
She pulls the second chair out with her foot, the one that has been in the corner for six years, and sets it across from hers.
"Then you are going to tell me where you have been, and I am going to decide what to do with you."