In her apartment in Red Hook, Lina wakes with a jump, as though someone has shaken her. She has taken a nap because she has been spending nights wide-eyed and sweating, some deep internal disturbance keeping her from dreaming. When she slips into shallow sleep at night she wakes half an hour later, her skin slick and icy.

With her eyes closed, Lina can feel a crackling in the air, an omen of change sneaking along the floorboards. Vines of it winding their way up and down the banisters. Something big is coming.

Chapter 27

Two days later, Sofia is sweating in her kitchen.

It’s not true that Sofia isn’t much for cooking. She doesn’t know that Eli said this about her, but she knows it’s whispered about in the neighborhood shops. Groups of mothers stop their conversations when Sofia approaches with her shopping basket. Trying something new? they might ask. Just some staples, Sofia responds, as haughtily as she can while weighed down by flour, tomatoes, eggs, garlic.

Sofia knows her mamma’s recipes the way she knows the rhythm of a Sunday Mass. Just because she doesn’t use them every day doesn’t mean they aren’t there.

By sense-memory, she unrolls the flank steak. It curls slightly, the blood and muscle of it contracting on her counter. It smells like coins. She takes a mallet and pounds it until it lies flat. It will be lined with speckled sliced mortadella, a layer of wilted spinach, and a mixture of basil, parsley, pine nuts, and parmesan. It will be rolled up and simmered in wine, tomatoes, and bay. All the windows in the house are open, lazy fans pushing the hot kitchen air around. Sofia’s hair is plastered to the back of her neck

The front door clicks. It’s not Saul, who is late. It’s Antonia, holding the small bundle of baby Enzo in one arm and a shopping bag in the other. “Christ, Tonia, you gave birth two weeks ago, what are you doing shopping?” Sofia asks. She wraps Antonia in her arms and then unwraps Enzo from his bundle of blankets and kisses him. “It’s a thousand degrees out, and you have him in all these blankets!”

Sofia hopes her voice is cheery but not saccharine; she examines Antonia as closely as she can. Antonia looks exhausted, but her hair is clean. Her eyes meet Sofia’s. She seems okay, Sofia thinks. “Are you okay?” she asks Antonia.

“I am,” says Antonia. She is almost giddy. She is sleepless and aching still, but she is so surprised she survived her second birth that she’s been cheerful, almost bubbly. Robbie has had to squirm away from her grasping hands; Paolo wonders where his mild-mannered, brooding wife has gone. Antonia is superwoman. Antonia can do anything. “I’m going to ask your mamma about the seafood.” Antonia leaves Sofia singing to Enzo in the hallway.