“I’ll walk,” Saul says to his driver. The driver tips his hat; his ride rolls slowly away. Saul turns north, to walk under the new highway. The line between Red Hook and Carroll Gardens buzzes now; it hums with construction, with transition; it vibrates the very core of South Brooklyn.

Managing two jobs is taking a toll on Saul. He worries constantly. He jumps in public, thinking that every shred of overheard conversation is his name, that every wallet withdrawn from a suit pocket is the gun that will reveal he has been found out.

Saul doesn’t know what to do.

Sometimes, when he is talking to Eli, he brings up the bounds of their relationship, carefully, trying to ascertain how long Eli imagines their partnership lasting. Someday, he says. Eventually. And once, of course, won’t always be sustainable. Eli has not so much as shrugged in response, has not ever inclined his head as Saul dances around the question: how will I get out of this? Saul could infer that Eli has no plans to let him go, but he is hopeful, or stubborn, or desperate.

During the winter, as 1947 slips into 1948, Saul and Sofia alternate between short, vicious arguments and a manic kind of attraction to one another. Both stop them in their tracks, make them late for work. Saul wonders if it is the energy of the secrets he is keeping—if working for both Eli Leibovich and Joey has managed to make him conductive, if his marriage has become an electrical current.

He knows it can’t last forever.

—

As the days grow colder, Antonia grows larger and larger. She eats ravenously. She sleeps ten hours a night. Robbie is late to school twice. Antonia gets a second alarm clock, but no bigger clothes. There are angry red lines across her belly and back at the end of the day.

Antonia fits herself into her old life for as long as she can. She sucks her stomach in. Her fear tangles itself amongst the buttons and zippers she begins to strain against. She stops going to the library to read after she vomits into a trash can, unable to make it to the women’s bathroom. This is a small failure, one she lines up with her others. Where did she think she was going, truly: a housewife spending mornings at a public library? What a flimsy way of convincing herself she was changing. Not unlike Lina, reading to avoid the ways her life was still bound to the Family that destroyed her. Antonia feels desperate, some days, and resigned, others.