“Not from me. I never told either of you.” Gemma raised her hands defensively. “And before you blame me for keeping quiet about that, too, put yourself in my position. I was deeply hurt when he told me he was leaving. We had our problems, sure, but who doesn’t? With two small children, and no money, but the knowledge that there was so much wealth almost within reach, but only almost…he’d have had to take you girls and go back to Costanza to get the money. Instead he cut himself off from her, never said a word about her, and accepted all the deprivations of life in a shabby apartment in this run-down neighborhood. I’d be lying if I said we were always happy. And I’m sure he missed Sicily, the countryside, the loneliness of the hills, the Mediterranean…but I don’t think any of that was the reason for his final decision. Longing, or discontent, or simply disappointment—I could have explained any of that to you. But when he said nothing at all, gave no reason…how could I make that clear to two little girls?” Gemma let herself drop to the floor in the doorway, drew up her knees, and stared at them. “So I thought I’d wait until I heard from him, until we could discuss it all again.”
“Did you hope he’d come back?”
Gemma shook her head. “I looked him in the eye when he said he was leaving. And he seemed so determined…Perhaps it was also fear that—”
“Fear?”
“It was a look I’d never seen on his face before. Almost panic.”
“What could have scared him so badly? Something he’d heard about Costanza?” She used the name deliberately this time, because Gemma was right about one thing: Rosa had never known the old woman, and the word grandmother sounded as if they’d had a close relationship, which they hadn’t.
“He didn’t tell me who had called or what it was about,” her mother said. “And he hardly said a word himself during the phone conversation.”
“Did you ever hear anything from him again once he left?”
“No, nothing. Soon after that, Florinda called and said he was dead. The doctors discovered that he’d had a weak heart—in fact it was a miracle that he lived as long as he did, they said. Maybe there’s something to the story of the curse on the male Alcantara descendants after all.”
“Nathaniel didn’t die because of any curse. That would have been nice and neat, wouldn’t it have? But it wasn’t like that.”
“You can’t blame me for that all your life. I knew exactly how tough it is, bringing up children as a single mother, holding down several jobs—and I wasn’t seventeen! How could you have—”
“You were just afraid of being saddled with another kid.”
“And you blame me for that?” Both Gemma’s hands had clenched into fists on the floor, but the gesture was helpless, not aggressive. “Take a look around! Is this what you’d want for your child? Crown Heights, a dump of an apartment?” Resigned, she leaned her head back against the door frame, took a deep breath, and said more quietly, “There’s something else I didn’t tell you.”
Surprise, surprise, thought Rosa.
“A day after you called Zoe and told her you were pregnant, Florinda called me. She made me the same offer as Costanza all those years ago, if I’d send you to her with your child.”
“She offered you money?”
“Florinda wasn’t as obvious about it as her mother. She promised me that you and the baby would never want for anything. And that as soon as you were eighteen, you would also be free to provide for me.” Her laugh was a little too shrill. “‘Provide’ for me. That’s how she put it.”
Rosa remembered Florinda’s expression when she first arrived in Sicily, the smile on her aunt’s face. Maybe it hadn’t been friendliness. Only triumph, because she had won at last.
In fact Rosa had been used more often than she’d thought. By Tano and Michele; by Salvatore Pantaleone, the capo dei capi; by Florinda; even by Zoe, who had gone along with her aunt.
The only one who hadn’t been using her was her mother. The person she’d blamed most for everything.
“Did it ever occur to you,” she asked, “that Florinda might be responsible for Dad’s death?”
Gemma laughed quietly. “I was sure of it for a long time. They never liked each other, and Florinda was in charge of the Alcantara businesses after Costanza got sick. In a way she