As daylight grays the sky it reveals a building which stands alone at the edge of the Red Hook dockyard. It is a Monday, so the longshoremen are arriving in quiet pairs, with their lunch pails and their thermoses of coffee. The building looks like it must once have been grand, but soon the sky will be light enough that the cracks and missing chunks in the façade will all be revealed.

If the longshoremen look closely, they can see something strange there. Something like a specter, a fairy tale. Something about which their mothers would have said, don’t get too close.

Did you see? one might ask the others. No, the others will reply. It’s best not to see.

But some of them will be sure they saw her. Lying in wait: a barefoot woman with wild hair, sitting on the steps to the building as dawn brims over.

—

Antonia wakes with a shooting pain running from the crown of her head down the side of her neck. Serves you right, she thinks, getting up from the floor of Robbie’s bedroom, for sleeping. And then: where is Paolo.

Antonia pads into the kitchen on soft feet. Her boys are sleeping, still as windless water. Paolo is not in the kitchen; he is not in the living room.

When Antonia was a teenager, she resented Lina for reminding her, again and again, about the pitfalls of Family life. Her mamma felt she married into a trap. Antonia can feel the metal teeth biting into her own leg now.

I should have listened to you, Mamma, Antonia thinks as she sits on the stool near the phone in the kitchen. She hovers her hand above the phone. She wills Paolo to call. Antonia’s worry has settled down into the throbbing of her neck, her back. It sits like lead in her intestines.

And then the phone rings.

Antonia answers before the first trill dies down. “Paolo.” A prayer.

“It’s Saul.”

“Saul.” Antonia’s neck twinges. Her hips are connected to the top of her head by a live wire of pain.

“Sofia didn’t answer. Have you talked to her?”

“Saul, what is going on? Where is Paolo?”

“I don’t know,” says Saul. “I’m sorry. But, Antonia, I can’t reach Sofia. I’ve been calling all morning.”

Antonia’s boys are still asleep. She can feel them through the walls. Somewhere, something rumbles: thunder, or her own self. Antonia grips the phone. “Did you try downstairs?”

“I don’t want to worry Rosa and Joey unless I have to,” Saul says.

“Saul, why don’t you go home? Go check on her? Where are you?”

“Just keep them safe,” says Saul. “Just tell them how much I love them.”

“Saul, please,” says Antonia. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“I’m not, Tonia. I promise.”

“Saul,” says Antonia. “Are you going to be okay?” She does not say, I promised Sofia.