where he played the accordion in one after another of the thousand Italian restaurants. He eventually owned one, owns it still, and my cousin Vittorio makes the food, it’s very good, by the way, and my father plays the accordion, and my mother takes the money.”
Malloy interrupted. “You were born in Wisconsin. Your father is Ralph Truitt.”
“Who are you?” Antonio demanded.
Fisk stepped in. “We were hired by your father to find you.”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“For several months. Yes.”
“That makes me very unhappy.”
Malloy and Fisk looked at their hands. Antonio turned his gaze and spoke to Catherine.
“I went to the conservatory in Philadelphia, one of those wretched snot-nosed children of the poorer classes who get to go to such places because the well-to-do public finds it costs nothing and they sleep better at night. Well, I was talented, sort of. I’ve played the piano in restaurants ever since. Actually, restaurants is a nice word for it. I wasn’t talented enough for concerts, and was too talented to teach. And besides, I hate children. I like adult company. Most adult company, at least. So here I am. I don’t know any Mr. Truitt. I’ve never been to Wisconsin, although it may be nice. It’s far away.”
“This is a fabrication. We have the facts.”
“You can check. I have papers, documents, a checkbook from the bank. Not much money, but you can look. My father still lives in Philadelphia. My mother is still named Angelina, and she still takes the money. Brandy?” He poured himself a glass, swirled it in the dim light.
“Your mother was the Contessa Emilia Truitt. Your father was Andrea Moretti, a piano teacher hired by your mother’s husband, Mr. Truitt.”
“A real countess. How charming. As much as I would like to exchange the restaurant life for a royal title, I’m afraid it isn’t true. Not a word. I could read you my mother’s letters. She begs me to come home and find a nice girl. A nice girl like the new Mrs. Truitt, no doubt. Why would Mr. Truitt want to see me if he’s not my father?”
“He feels badly.”
“Because his wife was a faithless whore?”
Malloy looked at Catherine with a sidelong glance.
“Because he was, because of circumstances, because he feels he was unkind to you, and he wants to make it up to you.”
“By making me leave Saint Louis and go to Wisconsin? It doesn’t sound like much of a birthright.”
“He’s your father. He has acted as your father since you were born.”
A ripple of anger crossed Tony Moretti’s face. “My father has acted as my father since I was born. Would you like to see photographs? I don’t have any. My baby things? They’re in Philadelphia. It’s simple to prove who you are. It’s hard to prove you’re not somebody else. I’m not this man’s son, no matter how much he wants me to be. I’m sorry Mr. Truitt feels the way he does. I’m very accommodating in general. I wish I could accommodate him. I wish I could accommodate you, but hospitality is helter-skelter around here, and all I’ve got is brandy and you don’t want brandy and I want you to leave.”
Catherine sat in a chair, swept clean of clothing, among which she noticed a pair of women’s dark stockings.
“Mr. Moretti,” she said softly.
“You were the lady, yes? The lady in black in the restaurant. The lady in mourning.”
“Yes.” Her hand was trembling as she spoke. “I’m not in mourning, as I said. You play beautifully.”
She pictured him in bed. She pictured him naked, aroused, lying back against silk pillows and waiting. Waiting for her. He smelled of last night’s stale cologne and the warmth of his bed. She could picture it all. She knew where he had been, what he had done. She smelled the woman who had recently left.
She spoke clearly, directly to him, and he listened to her words with careful attentiveness. “You have suffered. He knows that. He knows you must be angry. He’s suffered, too. His heart’s raw with the nights he’s spent in hurt. He knows he has hurt you. He knows he treated you badly. Now he wants to make it right. He wants to bring you home, to the house you were born in, the big house, and make it alive again. I won’t say he loves you. Yet. He wants to love you. To be kind to you. To be forgiven for… for everything. Please. I don’t know…”
“And what would you, Mrs. New Truitt, what would you do to make this ridiculous fantasy come true?”
“I have promised him. I’m telling you. He’s rich. I would do anything.”
“Give me your ring.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I lost my stickpin, remember? I like diamonds. Give it to me. I might want to give it to a girlfriend. I might want to wear it myself, one of my extravagances. I could make it into a new stickpin. It would attract attention when I play, don’t you think? The light? I may want to throw it in the Mississippi. I may swallow it. Give it to me.”
“Mrs. Truitt,” said Mr. Fisk in genuine alarm.
She hesitated a long moment, then she took off her yellow diamond and put it into his waiting hand.
“There. He told me to do anything. I said I would. It’s yours gladly. Just come home.”
“If it was home, if it had any connection to me, I would do it in a second, for you, and never need to take a ring from your lovely hand.” He slipped it on his little finger. “Small, but pretty.” It glinted in the light from the candles overhead, just guttering out.
“Now I want you to get out. Leave me in peace. Do you think my life is so nice? It’s not. Do you think I’m surrounded by love? I’m not. But there’s enough that I don’t need to go through this charade.” He handed the ring back to Catherine. “Or your little country diamond. Get the hell out, all of you.”
Malloy wasn’t finished. “Mr. Truitt, we don’t make mistakes.”
Moretti turned in a rage. “Don’t call me that name one more time, I’m warning you. My name is Moretti. This is my day off. My hour of being nice to strangers is over. Take your insane story back to this country bumpkin, whoever he is, and tell him how wrong you were. No, better yet, get on a train and go to Philadelphia. Ask anybody. They’ll tell you where Moretti’s is, and ask them about their son. They don’t like what I do. They think piano playing is for girls. They want me home, too. I would far rather go to a home where at least I know the people. But I have a home here. And you’re in it. Now get out.”
He opened the bottle and poured himself another big glass of brandy. Catherine could feel the warmth of it shooting through her veins like fire.
“We’ll come back.” Fisk spoke softly. There was almost no threat in his voice. Just enough.
“I don’t think so. I can’t imagine why.” Antonio sat down in a blue velvet chair, his scarlet dressing gown falling open across his chest. Catherine could see down his long torso to his navel.
There was nothing else to do. They left, and they could hear him laughing as they stumbled down the stairs in the half-light. Humiliated, the two Pinkertons. Catherine, putting her ring back on her finger, smiled. She was somehow elated.
On the way home, through the Sunday market, through the cheap dresses and thin coats and tin rings and frozen cabbage and copper cooking pots, she passed a man who sold birds. Yellow and blue and red canaries. Little songbirds. They looked half-dead with the cold, but she bought one, and an elaborate cage, and carried both home, holding the bird in her gloved hand, blowing her warm breath on its shivering body through the frozen Sunday streets of Saint Louis.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
She would wait for five days. Her heart was on fire, but she would wait. After that, though, she couldn’t wait any longer. Not one hour more.
While she waited, she wrote to Truitt. Before she told him about Antonio, she told him of her plans for the garden. She told him about her reading, her long afternoons of research in the library. She told him about the high windows and the long quiet tables and the slanting light. She told him about the possibilities for the garden, about how she might make it bloom again. She was even tender, but no more so than she needed to be. After all, she
