“You can’t just value someone, though,” says Detective Leo. “You have to compensate them accordingly. You have to show them.”

“I know my father knows that,” says Sofia. “I think he’s just doing what he can to take care of his family, and the families of everyone who works for him. He makes it seem easy, but it’s a lot of responsibility.”

“I understand that,” says Leo. “When my precinct reorganized—well. I understand being saddled with responsibility over other people.”

“I can tell,” says Sofia.

“Joey Colicchio really is an honorable man,” Leo says, and for the first time in her adult life, Sofia can see a road stretched out in front of her, a path she wants to take. This is the right thing for me, she thinks, and she is so grateful she almost weeps at the table. This is what I’m supposed to do.

—

When Sofia returns home and Saul asks, how was it? she turns to him with light in her eyes and says, it was easy.

And she expects to fall sound asleep that night, but she finds herself staring at the midnight ceiling, and she cannot figure out what is keeping her awake. Was it Leo’s face as they said goodbye, how he turned and scratched his head, so like Saul when he grapples with something wordless and gnarled? Was it Saul himself, who has only half-looked at her for days, who is gripped by a melancholy Sofia doesn’t recognize, and wouldn’t have expected, given that the war is over?

Sometime before she drifts off, Sofia remembers a school courtyard, and holding Antonia’s hand. A cluster of girls on the other side of the windswept swingset and Sofia could tell they were all talking about her. Your father is a murderer, Maria Panzini said, matter-of-factly, as they waited in line to go back inside. Ice like concrete in Sofia’s belly. Even in grade school, she had harbored some unspeakable desire to be better than the people around her. Has she succeeded now? Does she understand the price she’ll pay? It was easy, her own voice echoes. It was like it was made for her.

Next to Sofia, Saul feigns sleep. For hours, he stares with half-mast eyes at the ticking clock.

—