“Like outsiders?”

“Yeah. ‘Sewing circle’ don’t mean you just do your sewing. Historically, it’s for a good cause.”

“It is for a cause. If someone’s husband has a tear in his trousers or a child needs a hem taken down, it’s more efficient if a few of us, who are good at it, do it all at once. Sometimes, we’re called to make clothes for the needy. You should know this if you’re going to be one of us.”

“I guess you can call it what you want—with or without the cause—but economic specialization’s a sound theory, like… at scale. So you should just buy new pants.”

“We’re a frugal people.”

“No shit.” Sergio runs his hands over the cracks in the plaster. “Hey, did you know there was a sewing circle on a rescue ship off the Titanic? And it hit the iceberg at night, so a lotta people wound up on the rescue boat in, like, underpants and nightshirts. So the ladies did a sewing circle where they cut up blankets and shit. They made clothes outta them so no one stepped onto the dock in their pajamas. That’s nice, right?”

“Off the titanic what?” I turn a corner without his direction. I won’t lose him, but I indulge a second of hope before he doubles back to catch up. “What’s so big?”

“It’s the name of a boat that sank.”

“Ah. And the people who were rescued started a sewing circle. That is nice.”

“You’re all right, Sarah,” he says. “You’re a good listener.”

I’m about to ask him if calling me by my actual name is his version of sweet talk when I cross into the Gallery—an older, domed chamber connected to the one where I was cut into marriage with Dario.

Sergio stands in the center, on bloodstains faded to invisibility, and circles his hand at the portraits with dates under them that line the walls. “Who the fuck are these guys?”

He thinks he’s going to take over here without knowing our history or what our children are taught?

“These men sat at the head of the table. Starting from Johann”—I point at the oldest painting of a man pulled out of time in a high lace collar and pointy beard—“to my father.” I indicate a space of newly painted wall with a brass plate at the bottom.

PETER ENZO COLONIA

His painting is being prepared. I know the one they’re going to use. It hung between our living room windows.

“This was our first ceremonial room. The real church. We outgrew it.” I find the portrait of a man with a darker beard and a nose as crooked as a lost fight. He isn’t handsome, but when I was a girl, I stared at his painting for hours, captivated by the bolt of cruelty in his black eyes and thick hands. “Vigo Colonia had the big dome dug out. One day, his wife went to market with their five children. It was crowded. One child got separated. She chased her into a basement. Neither wife nor child was ever seen again.”