Chapter 1 - The Box
“You stupid little maid. I told you to send him home.”
Vanessa Bellini said it in front of thirty guests, with a diamond on her finger and a champagne glass in her hand.
I kept walking.
Beside me, seventy-one-year-old Salvatore Russo held a cardboard box against his chest.
Inside were his chauffeur’s cap, a dented thermos, and thirty-four years of a life somebody had decided no longer mattered.
Luca Moretti stood.
“Sal?”
The old man tried to smile.
“Just came to say goodbye, kid.”
Luca looked at the folded driving coat over Sal’s arm.
Then at me.
My name is Emma Reed.
I was twenty-nine, and until that evening, keeping my job had mostly meant knowing when to disappear.
Apparently, I had picked a terrible night to stop.
“Goodbye?” Luca asked.
Vanessa stepped between them.
“Darling, Sal decided it was time to retire.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Sal said it softly.
Every guest heard him.
“She told me you wanted someone younger.”
Luca’s expression went still.
“We discussed hiring another driver,” Vanessa said quickly.
“For you.”
Two words.
Her smile disappeared.
Luca approached Sal and lifted the framed photograph from his box.
In it, a little boy sat beside his father on the hood of a station wagon.
Sal stood behind them, laughing.
“Summer of ’92,” Sal murmured.
Luca set down the photograph.
“This man drove my mother to chemotherapy.
He taught me to drive.
He carried my father into the emergency room.”
Vanessa folded her arms.
“He’s seventy-two.”
“Seventy-one,” Sal said.
Nobody laughed after they saw Luca’s face.
He handed Sal his coat.
“You’re not going anywhere.”
Then he looked at Vanessa.
“Why did he have to leave tonight?”
Sal lowered his eyes.
“Because of Tuesday.”
Vanessa’s fingers tightened around her glass.
“He’s confused.”
“I remember where I drove you.”
Sal reached into his box.
When his hand came out, he was holding a child’s red wool mitten.
Luca stared at it.
“A house on West Addison,” Sal said.
“After midnight.”
“Stop,” Vanessa whispered.
“There was a little boy waiting on the porch.”
Luca didn’t move.
“What boy?”
“He ran straight to her.”
Sal swallowed.
“Called her Mom.”
The silence felt heavier than the chandelier overhead.
Vanessa set down her champagne.
“Luca, there’s something you don’t understand.”
“You told me you’d never had children.”
She reached for him.
He stepped away.
May you like
Then he closed his hand around the mitten and turned toward Sal.
“Take me to that house.”
