They all look younger. Dewier. And yet, there’s suspicion behind Ginny’s eyes—as if she wants to trust me but isn’t sure if I’ll turn into a ten-headed lizard.
Grandma’s coming back from the wall of cabinets. Her hair is coming out of its braid and her black dress is getting stepped on at the hem. She’s holding a plastic bin with blue masking tape striping the side. “REPAIRS” is written on it.
She’s the one who looks older—even more aged than the previous night. I remember trusting her and knowing I shouldn’t at the same time. I wanted her love so much. After my mother died, I’d needed it, but Grandma had seemed so angry that Mom had the temerity to be gone.
Dario had met her. He and Willa didn’t have a place to send her. She came back here and somehow lived until she died.
Are You My Mother?
No, Grandma, you are not.
Does she know Mom ran away? Is that why she was so angry?
She places the repair box in front of an empty seat and comes to me, fingers spread, hands low to take mine, not held high for an embrace.
“Sarah!” Her voice is gentle in intent, but scratchy as a metal spoon on an iron pan. She takes my hands in hers, curling paper skin against the webs between my fingers. “You seem tired.”
The first words out of her mouth are a test. Is her granddaughter a self-involved child, or a grown woman who would walk over broken glass to do her duty?
“I’m fine.”
“You didn’t tell me Massimo was injured.”
I shot him, Grandma, and I’ll do it again.
She’ll never ask me how it happened. That’s not her place, and if there’s one thing Grandma knows, it’s everyone’s place.
One thing I know? How to pretend I’m frightened of my own shadow.
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“Well, you look just fine!” she says.
And how dare I come home with my brother broken like that. I should have at least a limb missing.
“Thank you.”
“My aunt said Massimo walked out of the clinic this morning and came right here.” Amara’s eyes are wide with awe, her face filled with the religious zeal of infatuation. “Like it was nothing.”
The women around the table are looking at me expectantly, but I admit nothing and tell no stories. I pull my hands away from Grandma’s and greet each woman with a tepidly appropriate kiss.
“Your old seat is ready.” Grandma pats the back of the chair. “How about a few repairs? You were always so good at that.”
I wasn’t. I hated it. I wanted to do embroidery and decoration like Mom with her cherries. I wanted to make things beautiful, but Grandma always sat me at repairs where I wanted to die of boredom.
I look out the window I always daydreamed through. What were in all the stores? In the hallways beyond the doors? At the other end of the street? Danger. Fear. But what kind? Who would I be if I was down there?
Standing in front of the radiator now, with 14th Street below me, the view creates more yearning than curiosity. Those spaces should be accessible. The answers are within reach. The people are not scary… except that guy. The one with his arm in a sling, looking up at me as if he knows me.
Connor.
It’s Connor.
My breath stops. My ears thrum. Blood rushes to my feet and hands.
He looks away.
“Sarah?” Ginny says, shocking my system back to reality. “You all right?”
“I was just thinking about how glad I am to be in here and not out there.” I smile like a docile little lamb and sit.
The others put their heads down to their work. Grandma takes her chair at the head of the table, but she’ll be up a dozen times. I slide the top from the repair bin and stop before it’s even open all the way. The smell hits me so hard, it would have knocked me over if I wasn’t already sitting.
It’s sharp and nutty. Dario.
I can’t savor it, because there’s also a metallic sting. I was young—maybe eleven—when we were counting pennies to put into rolls. There were five left over. I closed my fist around those last pennies. I was going to hide them in my room and keep them for myself. But when Grandma opened my hand, my palms were sweating and the smell that came from them was copper and guilt.
I open the box to find the pile of seafoam green fabric. Bloodstains explain the sweaty-penny smell.
This is why he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
I have to repair my husband’s blood-soaked prison uniform. I look at the women. They don’t look back. Even Denise has her head down over her work. Only Grandma takes a moment to glance at me.
“The pocket’s on the bottom,” she says.
“Thank you.”
I take out the shirt. An index card is paper clipped to the neckline. The card says Close rip in front and replace pocket. As promised, a square of fabric lies on the bottom of the bin.
If I bury my face in this shirt, it will be as if I were there with him.
Once I remove the pocket, I close the bin and put it at the base of the chair, where my feet can rest on it, then lay out today’s project. I can’t have an emotion about the blood or how the pocket got torn off so violently the whole front of the shirt ripped. No sympathy. No love. No questions. It needs repair. That’s what I’m here for. This is the test.
“Was it scary outside?” Lili asks cheerfully, threading her machine.
“Scary?” I reach for the sewing kit in the center of the table. Needle. Seam ripper. Thread. Which color do I match? The fabric or the blood?
Breakfast was toast with jelly. It threatens to come up.
Don’t be sick.
I pluck thread to match fabric and another to match blood.
“Did you find anyone he took?” Ginny adds, trying to sound casual. “Any of us that he got? What about Nella? Did he say where she is?”
Just another girl snatched. Another reason to fear outsiders. But Nella’s bare feet are touching ocean water and the salt breeze is blowing back her hair.
What if I told them how it could be for them? What if I offered them freedom?
What if this is a test of my truthfulness?
Denise is looking right at me. She knows I wasn’t suffering outside. She knows what happened to Dafne. She’s the only one who’s seen me with Dario. She clears gunk out of her throat and quickly draws her hand across it.
Thank you, Denise.
“No.” I lay the shirt flat. “I didn’t see her or anyone.”
Can I detect what he went through from the placement of the blood? Will it put me in his shoes? If it would take away a single moment of his pain, I’d live in this shirt, just as it is.
Nella was going to be given in marriage to a widower three times her age with thick glasses and a lazy lower lip that drooped, exposing his bottom teeth. Of course she ran away.
I look up at Amara’s big round eyes, desperate for some kind of answer. Her and Lili’s mother, Wanda, was supposedly killed by an outsider. They must wonder if Dario got her.
“I’m sorry.” I mean it. I am sorry.
I pull loose threads from the pocket and the shirt front.
Dario will have this in his hands.
I thread the needle to match the fabric.
Do a good job for him.
“Did you see—” Lili starts, but Grandma intercedes.
“Enough. Sarah was held captive. She didn’t see anyone else that monster stole. Do your work.”