Chapter 2 - THE THIRD-FLOOR KEY AND THE PAWN TICKET
"Oh, Damian, darling, don't take her literally!" Valentina laughed, though the sound was as brittle as thin ice cracking under a boot. She stepped forward in her red silk gown, laying a manicured hand on Damian’s bicep. "Your mother has been getting so confused in the evenings lately. We talked about how she wanted to feel independent and contribute to the household expenses, remember?"
Damian didn't look at Valentina. He didn't brush her hand off his arm, either—he simply stood so motionless that Valentina’s fingers slowly curled back to her side as if she had touched dry ice.
Around the thirty-foot mahogany dining table, thirty-four of northern New Jersey’s wealthiest shipping executives, city councilmen, and syndicate capos stared intently at their silverware. At the far end of the table, Damian’s sixty-eight-year-old uncle, Salvatore Coletti, slowly set his wineglass down on the lace tablecloth.
"Mom," Damian said, his deep voice pitched low, meant only for the frail woman standing in front of him. "Look at me."
Rosa lifted her chin. Under the harsh crystal chandelier, I could see the dark purple hollows beneath her eyes—the exhaustion of a seventy-nine-year-old woman who had been waking up at five in the morning to scrub the back porch stairs before Damian came down for his espresso, all because Valentina told her that "boarders who couldn't pay full price had to pitch in."
"I'm not confused, Damian," Rosa whispered, her voice trembling with quiet dignity. "My mind is fine. It’s just my knees that hurt on the third-floor stairs."
Damian’s dark eyebrows drew together. "The third-floor stairs? Your suite is on the first floor off the sunroom. I had the stone steps removed two years ago so you wouldn't have to climb a single stair."
"Valentina’s sister needed the sunroom suite for her bridal dress fittings last month," Rosa said softly, glancing nervously at the red-gowned woman beside her son. "And since my social security check was four hundred dollars short of the twelve-hundred-dollar room fee this Friday, I didn't want to complain about the attic room."
I stood two feet behind Rosa, still holding the heavy silver serving tray stacked with porcelain soup tureens. My wrists ached from the weight, and my heart was hammering so hard against my ribs I was sure the entire table could hear it.
Damian slowly turned his head toward me. "Emma. Put the tray on the sideboard."
"Yes, Mr. Coletti," I said quietly, setting the silver tray down beside the champagne buckets.
"Now tell me," Damian continued, his dark eyes locking onto mine with terrifying intensity. "Who has been collecting twelve hundred dollars a month from my mother?"
"Emma is a liar who has been stealing silverware from the pantry!" Valentina snapped, her voice rising an octave as red blotches appeared on her throat. "Damian, you cannot seriously interrogate me in front of my father's partners based on the word of a girl who begs for overtime every week!"
"Answer me, Emma," Damian said, as if Valentina hadn't made a sound.
I thought of my mother sitting in her rented hospital bed in Hackensack, waiting for the visiting physical therapist my next paycheck was supposed to cover. If Valentina had her way, I would be blacklisted from every domestic agency in Bergen County by midnight.
Then I looked at Rosa’s swollen, arthritic knuckles—and the faded blue embroidery on the white apron in Damian’s hands: ROSA’S DINER.
"Your mother hasn't been paying Valentina directly, sir," I said clearly, my voice steadying as anger burned away my fear. "Every Friday morning for the last four weeks, Valentina’s cousin, Matteo, comes to the kitchen door with a printed invoice from Russo Property Management. Last Friday, when Mrs. Coletti’s pension check had already been drained to zero, she gave him the gold charm bracelet your father bought her when your sister was born."
A collective intake of breath rippled around the banquet table.
In an Italian family like the Colettis, taking an old widow’s pension was disgusting; taking the jewelry her dead husband had given her was a death sentence.
"That’s a lie!" Valentina shrieked, spinning toward her cousin Matteo—a slick thirty-year-old in a gray sharkskin suit sitting near the bottom of the table. "Matteo, tell him! Tell him Rosa gave you that bracelet to have the clasp repaired in the Diamond District!"
Matteo’s throat bobbed as he swallowed hard, pushing his chair back half an inch. "Boss, swear to God, Valentina told me—"
"Shut up, Matteo!" Valentina hissed.
Damian didn't yell. He didn't slam his fist on the table. Instead, he folded his mother’s old diner apron over his arm, reached into the small front pocket where waitresses used to keep their order pads, and froze.
His fingers had brushed a stiff piece of yellow cardstock inside the cotton pocket.
Damian pulled it out.
"Rosa," Damian said softly, holding up two small items: a rusted iron skeleton key attached to a brass hotel tag stamped 3B — SERVANTS' QUARTERS, and a yellow carbon-copy pawn ticket from Bergen Pawn & Bullion in Newark, dated six days ago. "You kept the ticket."
"Emma steamed it out of Matteo’s coat pocket when he left it in the mudroom on Tuesday," Rosa admitted in a small voice. "I didn't want you fighting with Valentina before the wedding, Damian. You’ve been so lonely since Elena died... I wanted you to be happy."
Damian stared at the yellow pawn ticket in his hand.
Suddenly, the muscle in his jaw stopped ticking. His eyes dropped to the bottom line of the ticket, where the pawnshop clerk had typed the serial number and description of the item Matteo had pawned for eight hundred dollars cash.
Item #4409: 14k Gold Link Bracelet w/ St. Jude Medal & Engraved Baby Hospital Tag — Hackensack General, 10/14/2019, Boy Coletti.
I saw the blood drain completely from Damian’s face.
Wait.
Rosa had told me the bracelet was from when Damian’s younger sister was born forty years ago. Why did the pawn ticket say 10/14/2019 — Boy Coletti?
Seven years ago, Damian’s late wife, Elena, had died in a catastrophic house fire at their summer home on the Jersey Shore—five months pregnant with their first child, or so every newspaper in New Jersey had reported.
Damian slowly lifted his head. He didn't look at Valentina. He didn't look at Matteo.
May you like
He looked straight down the length of the thirty-foot table at his Uncle Salvatore, who was staring at the yellow slip of paper with the eyes of a man watching his own grave being dug.
"Sal," Damian whispered, his voice dropping so low the crystal droplets on the chandelier seemed to shiver. "Elena died in March of twenty-nineteen. Why does the hospital charm on my mother’s bracelet have my son’s birth date stamped seven months after my wife’s funeral?"
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