Years ago, Saul asked Sofia what happened to Antonia’s father. It was early in their courtship and he was distracted by her hands in his, the way the busy sidewalk seemed to clear for them to walk, and her smell: like soil or like lilac, something he wanted to eat, to choke on, to drown in. So when she said a tragedy, he accepted that as the whole answer. But as Saul looks at Antonia, he realizes there is a hole in his understanding of the sorrows that shaped her. A specter, standing in the kitchen, watching him cook. He has not learned what he needs to know, when he needs to know it. “Antonia,” he asks, carefully, “what really happened to your papa?”

Antonia’s face goes gray and green. “You don’t know,” she says.

The air in the kitchen grows close, thick, rancid with the secret. Saul realizes he is holding his breath. “I know some of it,” he says.

Antonia peers down the hall to make sure Julia and Robbie are still nowhere to be seen. “Do you know that Joey meets with a man called Tommy Fianzo every month?” she asks.

“I do,” says Saul. He is taken to that meeting every month. Someday, he will go on his own. He has not asked why the meeting happens. He has been, he realizes, too trusting. This is something he has thought about a lot over the last year. Saul left his home, left his family, transplanted himself to the fertile soil of someone else’s life. He is a breathing transformation. But in other ways, Saul is beginning to understand that he has let his life happen to him. How much has he let go of? How much is he overlooking?

“Joey used to work for Tommy,” says Antonia. “Joey was best friends with my papa, Carlo. They were all friends.” Antonia can feel her face heating up, but her hands and feet are freezing. It is as though her body itself does not know how to speak this secret out loud.

“I know that,” says Saul. “Sofia told me—years ago. She said they were friends. She said he disappeared.”

“No,” says Antonia. “My papa decided he didn’t want to work for the Family anymore. But it doesn’t work that way. So Tommy Fianzo had him killed. In a way, I guess, disappeared. We never found out what happened to him. Joey couldn’t work for him anymore after that. They made some kind of agreement. Joey pays him; they work separately.”

Sofia had lied to him? Saul can picture her face as she told him. A tragedy, she had said, and shrugged. A mystery. She had lied to him.