“Yes?” she said into the phone, on the fly.

“Mare?” It was her father.

“Pop, hi.” Mary pushed the swinging door into a tiny ladies’ room. “Sorry I didn’t call you back. I spoke with Bernice.”

“That’s not why I’m calling.” Her father sounded panicky. “Can you come home right away?”

“What’s the matter? Are you okay? Is Ma?”

“She’s fine. Just get home. Hurry.”

Mary’s heart tightened in her chest.

“Hurry.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T he sun ran for cover behind the flat asphalt roofs, and Anthony pulled the Prius in front of her parent’s rowhouse. “I’ll park and be right back,” he said, and Mary thanked him. She got out of the car in front of her two older neighbor ladies, who were standing close together on the sidewalk. They turned and looked at her, oddly hard-eyed in their flowered dresses and worn cardigans.

Mary ran up her parents’ steps. “Hey, Mrs. DaTuno. Mrs. D’Onofrio.”

“Hmph.” Mrs. D’Onofrio sniffed, uncharacteristically chilly, but Mary didn’t have time to deal. She shoved her key in the front door and hurried inside, where a small crowd filled the dining room.

“You’re just in time,” her father said, upset.

“Dad, where’s Ma?” Mary asked, and just then, the sound of a commotion came from the kitchen.

“Oh, sweet Jesus!” Her father took her arm and hustled her back through the crowd, as fast as he could on bad knees and slip-ons. They all frowned at Mary as she passed, but she didn’t understand why.

Her father was saying, “Thank God we got the heads-up from Cousin Joey. That’s when I called you.”

“It’s okay, Pop, I’ll handle it,” Mary said, but when they reached the kitchen, she wasn’t so sure.

An angry Mrs. Gambone stood on one side of the kitchen table, an older version of Trish, too much makeup, deep crows’-feet, and tiny wrinkles fanning out from her lips. Stiff black curls trailed down the back of her long black jacket, which she wore with black stirrup pants and black half-boots. Mary’s mother stood near the oven, distinctly Old World with her puffy hair, smock apron, and flowered housedress, and she held a clear plastic bag in her hand. Christening dresses blanketed the kitchen table, as if she’d been interrupted while she was wrapping them.

“Mrs. Gambone?” Mary asked, and Trish’s mother turned on Mary, her dark eyes flashing.

“You!” Mrs. Gambone said in a chain-smoker’s rasp. “What do you have to say for yourself? You let that monster take my daughter.”

“No, that’s not true.” Mary felt stung, and her mother stepped forward, shaking her fist holding the plastic bag and defending her daughter in rapid Italian.

“Don’t you dare talk to our daughter that way,” her father said, a running translation. “This is our home.”

“Don’t talk to me that way!” Mrs. Gambone yelled back, straining her voice and setting her neck veins bulging. “You’re scum, Mare, pure scum!”

“Mary’s a big shot now!” a man shouted from the dining room, and the crowd murmured in angry assent. All that was missing were the burning torches, and Mary felt like Frankenstein with a law degree. If she wasn’t Responsible For The Neighborhood, somebody forgot to tell the Neighborhood.

“Let me explain,” Mary began, but Mrs. Gambone cut her off with a hand chop.

“My daughter came to you for help. You coulda helped her but you didn’t! Now she’s gone!”

“I wanted to help her,” Mary almost cried out, as the words hit home.

“She knew he was gonna kill her and now he did. She’s gone!” Mrs. Gambone’s lower lip trembled. “I told her to go to you. She didn’t know what to do. She was too scared to leave him. But you didn’t lift a finger! You didn’t care what happened to her!”

“Mrs. Gambone, I did care. I wanted her to go to court and I went to the Roundhouse today-”

“Yeah, right, and you yelled at Giulia because she went on TV! She’s tryin’ to save my baby’s life. Why didn’t you help my Trish? If you had done something, she’d be home now. All safe.”

No, no. Mary felt stricken. It was true. Once she set aside her lawyerly rationalizations, the fact remained that she was the one Trish had gone to for help.

“She called me, last night, but I musta missed the call. She left a message, she said he was gonna kill her, she said where she was, but it was all static.”

“What?” Mary couldn’t process it fast enough. “Please, slow down and tell me what happened.”

“What do you care?” Mrs. Gambone shot back. “I told the police, they know. She called me for help. She said he was with her, he was going to kill her. Then he grabbed the phone. She didn’t have time to talk, she said he was comin’ right back in the room.”

“What time did she call you?”

“It was around ten o’clock she called, but I didn’t get her message till today. I must not a heard the phone, sometimes it’s weird, it don’t get messages right away.” Mrs. Gambone’s voice broke, anguished. “I came here because I wanted your family to know what you did to my daughter. She’s all I had, all I had, and he took her! She’s gone!” Mrs. Gambone’s eyes welled up. “My beautiful, beautiful baby. My only baby, my little girl.”

Mary felt her heart break. Her father, her mother, and the crowd fell silent, stunned by the depth of Mrs. Gambone’s agony, raw and unvarnished, echoing in the quiet house.

“Can you know…what that feels like? To be a mother, and your baby…your baby’s gone?” Mrs. Gambone finally broke down, and her ladyfriends supported her as she sagged, still trying to speak. Suddenly, she banged her fist on the kitchen table in sheer frustration, and the force of her hand jostled a cup of coffee sitting next to the christening dresses. Before anybody could stop it, the cup tipped over and coffee spilled on the pristine white dresses.

“No!” Mary yelped.

“Dio!” Her mother plucked the tiny dresses from the table, but it was too late. The espresso soaked instantly into the soft cotton, even as she hurried them to the sink. Mary sprang to her side, twisting on the cold water.

“I didn’t mean it…I’m sorry,” Mrs. Gambone said, her tears subsiding.

“We’ll pray for you and your daughter,” her father said softly. He handed her some napkins from a plastic holder, and the ladyfriend accepted them for Mrs. Gambone, who turned miserably away and left the kitchen under support, followed by the crowd. They found their way out the front door, closing it behind them, and only then did Mary notice that her mother was chewing her lower lip in an effort not to cry.

“I’m sorry, Ma. So sorry.” Mary couldn’t do anything but stand by her mother’s side at the sink and hug her.

“S’all right, Maria, s’all right.” Her mother ran cold water over the soggy white clump until her knobby knuckles turned red, but the coffee stains had already set. All four dresses were ruined.

“Aww, Veet.” Her father came over and rubbed her mother’s back. “Maybe we put a lil’ bleach and it’ll come out?”

“No, no, no,” her mother said, shaking her head, washing the dresses and trying not to cry. “No, the dress, they no matter. I no like what they say about my Maria. That hurts my heart.”

“What’s going on?” came a new voice, and Anthony appeared in the kitchen, his dark eyes wide as he took in the scene.

“Ma, it’s okay, it’s all okay.” Mary gathered her mother in her arms, meeting Anthony’s eye. Surprisingly, his pained expression mirrored her own.

Half an hour later, the four of them were sitting at the kitchen table, trying to get back to normal. The christening dresses soaked in the cellar in a pot of cold water and Clorox, and the kitchen table was set with spaghetti, hot sausage, and meatballs. Steam from the plate, carrying the comforting aromas of fresh basil and peppery sausage, warmed Mary’s face. She was trying not to be bothered by the fact that Anthony was sitting in Mike’s old chair, or that her parents seemed overly happy it was filled again.