Six Months to the Day

Nobody in the Amato townhouse remembers what today is, so you buy yourself a cannoli.

Six months. April 12 to October 12. You eat it standing at the kitchen island at eleven at night, still in your shop apron, a smear of pollen on your wrist. Carmela has left a plate of chicken under foil with a note in her slanted handwriting: Eat. He won't be home.

He is never home.

You married Vincenzo Amato in St. Rosalia's on a cold spring morning because your father said the Orsinis would bury the Ferrante name by summer if you didn't. You remember the church smelled like lilies you didn't choose. You remember your husband's hand, warm and dry, and the fact that he didn't squeeze yours once. You remember the kiss at the altar, so brief and so careful it barely counted, and the reception where he danced with you exactly once and then disappeared with Renzo before the cake.

Since then: good morning, good evening, a nod in the hallway. Separate bedrooms on the second floor, his at one end, yours at the other, a long runner of red carpet between them that you've started to think of as a border. He leaves at nine at night. He comes back after you're asleep. Some mornings you hear the shower running in his room and nothing else.

You have your own keys. Your own shop. Your own life three blocks away, where people laugh when you walk in. You stopped setting a second plate in May.

You lick the powdered sugar off your thumb and turn off the kitchen light.

On your way up the stairs you stop at the front door. The porch light switch is right there, a little brass toggle. You've never touched it. He never asked.

You flick it on. You tell yourself it's because the street's been loud lately. You go to bed.

The sound that wakes you is the back door.

Not a slam. A careful click, then something heavy against the wall. You lie still, counting. The clock says 2:04. Then you hear Renzo Caruso's voice, low and rough, and another voice answering, one you know far better from the hallway than from conversation.

"I said go home."

"Boss, you need Dr. Lazaro, you're bleeding through your..."

"Go home, Renzo."

You're out of bed before you decide to be. Bare feet on cold wood, his oversized cardigan from the hall closet that you stole in June and he's never mentioned. You take the back stairs.

The kitchen is lit only by the light over the stove. Vincenzo is sitting on a stool at the island, jacket off, one hand pressed flat against his left side. His white shirt is red from the ribs down.

He looks up when you come in, and for a second his face does something you've never seen it do. It opens.

Then it shuts again. "Go back to bed."

"You're bleeding on my counter."

"It's my counter."

"I wipe it," you say, and you're already at the drawer where Carmela keeps the real first aid kit, the one with the suture packs, because this is that kind of house and you learned that in week two.

Renzo is in the doorway, big and miserable, his knuckles split. "Mrs. Amato. He won't let me call anyone."

"Then I'm anyone," you say. "Ava Amato, emergency services." "Go, Renzo. I've got him."

Renzo looks at his boss. Vincenzo looks at you. Something passes between the two men that you aren't fluent in yet, and then Renzo goes, and the back door clicks again, and you're alone with your husband for the first time in six months.

"Shirt," you say.

He unbuttons it with one hand. You've never seen him without a jacket, let alone without a shirt, and it's not fair, it's honestly not fair, that a man can be bleeding and still look like that. Broad shoulders, long lean muscle, a pale scar along his left collarbone you didn't know about. His hair, usually pushed back with ruthless precision, has fallen across his forehead. Black hair, black eyes, a jaw that should be on a billboard for something expensive. Women on Taylor Street stop talking when he walks past. You've watched them. You've never let yourself be one of them.

The cut runs four inches along his ribs. Clean. A knife, not glass.

"Who did this?"

"Nobody important."

"Vincenzo."

"It's handled."

You thread the needle. Your hands aren't steady, and he sees it. "You don't have to," he says.

"Do you want me to call the doctor you won't let Renzo call?"

A pause. "No."

"Then hold still."

He doesn't flinch when the needle goes in. He watches you instead, the way he's never let himself watch you in six months of good-mornings and closed doors. The stove light makes his lashes ridiculous. His breath is careful and even, and you can feel his eyes on your mouth, your hands, the cardigan.

"That's mine," he says quietly.

"You never wore it."

"No," he agrees, and that's all.

Seven stitches. You work the way your nonna taught you to darn socks, small and patient. Halfway through, he lets out a breath that isn't quite a laugh.

"What?"

"You're humming."

You didn't know you were. You stop. He looks almost sorry.

"Why didn't you let Renzo take you to Lazaro?" you ask.

He's quiet so long you think he won't answer. Then: "Because Lazaro would have asked questions in front of people. And you don't."

"I'm asking one now."

"You're asking the only one I can't answer tonight."

You tie off the last stitch. Your fingers rest against his skin a second longer than they need to, and he goes very still under them, like a man standing next to something he's afraid to break.

"Done," you say.

"Thank you." Formal. Then, softer, so softly you almost don't hear it, he says your name. "Ava."

Not Mrs. Amato. Not good evening. Your name, the way people say a word in church. Six months, and he's never said it like that. You aren't sure he's ever said it at all.

You look up. He's closer than you thought. His hand has come up, as if to touch your face, and stopped halfway.

"You left the light on," he says.

"The street's been loud."

"Has it."

The doorbell rings.

Both of you freeze. It's 3:02 in the morning. The bell rings again, long, insistent. Vincenzo is on his feet before you can stop him, shirt dragged back on, one hand going to the small of his back where, you realize with a cold drop in your stomach, there's a gun you never noticed.

He moves to the hall without a sound. You follow. Through the frosted glass of the front door, under the porch light you turned on, you can see a man's shape: shorter, heavier, a flat cap you'd know anywhere because you bought it for him two Christmases ago.

"That's my father," you whisper. "Why is my father here at three in the morning?"

Vincenzo doesn't answer. He's looking at the shape on the porch the way he must have looked at whoever cut him.

"Don't open it," he says.