Chapter 9 - THREE STEPS HOME
My mother's hands trembled as she lifted the lid off the rusted tin recipe box—the same little blue-flowered box that used to sit on our kitchen counter in Milwaukee before the smoke took everything.
Underneath a stack of handwritten cannoli and Sunday gravy cards was a thick cream envelope sealed with faded wax, along with five hundred-thousand-dollar bearer bonds.
"I thought Russo wanted the bonds," I said, sitting on the wooden footstool beside my mother's chair while Leo climbed straight into my lap, sleepily rubbing his eyes with his fist.
"The bonds were what Dominic put in that box ten years ago when he set up a blind trust in case you were ever found, Emma," Marcus said, leaning heavily on a wooden cane while his wife Martha stood beside him holding his arm. "My father never kept Dominic's fifty thousand dollars back in Milwaukee. He used every cent of it to buy Sofia a clean social security number in St. Louis and pay off the local police inspector so Romano's father wouldn't trace the Greyhound bus."
Dominic looked up sharply at his house manager. "You let me believe this tonight in the study—you told me your father stole that money."
"Because I didn't know if Dr. Russo had a listening device on the study phone—which he did," Marcus replied calmly. "If Russo or Romano knew my family had been protecting Sofia's trust fund with your blessing since before your father died, they would have killed Martha at the church before you ever noticed Emma's ankle."
I stared at Marcus—the strict, unsmiling house manager who had scolded me over water spots on crystal glasses and told me fifty women in Chicago wanted my job.
"Eleven months ago, when I applied for the maid position," I whispered, the truth dawning on me with breathtaking clarity, "you knew who I was the day you hired me."
For the first time in nearly a year, Marcus Hale smiled—a tired, genuine smile that reached all the way to his eyes.
"Why do you think I assigned you exclusively to the dining room and the first-floor pantry, Emma?" Marcus asked softly. "And why do you think I kept telling you fifty other women wanted your job? I was trying to get you to quit and take the safe nursing scholarship I had anonymously mailed to your apartment before Tommy Romano's men started coming to Dominic's dinners. When Clara stole your birth certificate two days ago, bringing you and Leo here under Dominic's roof was the only card I had left to play."
My throat closed with emotion as I reached out and took Marcus's hand, squeezing his cool fingers.
"You saved my son's life today," I told him, tears slipping down my face. "And mine."
"Your ankle took the worst of it," Marcus said with deep regret, looking down at my white bandage. "When I saw Romano's spotter van outside your building at six this morning, I knew if I didn't make it look like I was roughing you up over Clara's debt, they would have shot through my back window and hit Leo."
In my lap, Leo blinked awake and looked at the gentle woman in the gray shawl sitting right above us.
He reached out one small finger and touched the wooden rosary hanging from Sofia's wrist.
"Yours broke," Leo said matter-of-factly in his quiet five-year-old voice. "Like my dinosaur tail."
My mother let out a tearful laugh that filled the warm, flower-scented conservatory.
"Yes, tesoro, it did," Sofia whispered, opening her arms as Leo leaned back against her chest without a trace of fear, instantly trusting the woman whose eyes matched his own. "And do you like dinosaurs?"
"Stegosaurus is the best one," Leo informed her seriously, holding up the blue plastic toy. "Uncle Dominic fixed him by finding him in the car. And Rosa gave me chicken soup with little stars."
Dominic reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the silver locket on its broken chain—except while we had been waiting in the hallway outside the convent, he had slipped the locket onto his own heavy gold chain.
He leaned down and fastened the gold chain around my neck so the silver locket rested warm and secure over my heart.
"You don't work in the dining room anymore, Emma," Dominic said quietly, his hand resting on my shoulder while his other hand ruffled Leo's dark curls. "In fact, the third floor is being renovated starting tomorrow morning into an apartment for Sofia, you, and Leo—with no back stairs required."
"Wait," I said, looking up at him with a tearful smile. "What did the envelope in the recipe box say?"
Sofia opened the cream envelope at the bottom of the tin box and pulled out the deed to the waterfront warehouse district Dominic had been negotiating over with ten men in suits just four hours ago.
"Your father put the entire south harbor parcel in my name and my children's names before the Milwaukee fire," Sofia told Dominic softly, handing him the stamped deed. "Romano never had a legal claim to that waterfront. It belonged to Emma the moment she was born."
Three weeks later, the stitches came out of my right ankle.
That Sunday afternoon, the long mahogany table in Dominic Valenti's dining room wasn't set for ten cold-eyed businessmen in dark suits.
It was covered in a white linen tablecloth loaded with Rosa's baked ziti, warm garlic bread, and a platter of my mother's homemade cannoli.
Marcus and Martha Hale sat near the head of the table—Marcus officially retired on a full pension as a family advisor—laughing as Leo drove a brand-new fleet of plastic dinosaurs between the crystal water goblets.
Clara was serving eighteen months at a minimum-security facility downstate after pleading guilty to helping Russo; I had put commissary money in her account so she wouldn't go hungry, though I knew our paths were forever separate now.
Dr. Russo and Tommy Romano were behind federal bars in metropolitan lockup with no bail.
As Rosa carried in the coffee tray from the service door, I stood up from my chair beside my mother and walked across the marble floor to help her.
One step.
Two steps.
Three steps.
I put my right heel flat and firm against the polished floor, without pain, without fear, and without ever having to disappear again.
May you like
Dominic looked up from the head of the table, where Leo was sitting on his knee wearing a tiny dark suit jacket tailored just for him, and raised his glass to me with a proud, quiet smile.
I was finally home.
