“When Carlo wanted—to get out.” As Paolo speaks he drapes the name of his wife’s father over his tongue, holding it out to Lina like an offering, entering himself into a tragedy which has never been named explicitly but which sits at every dinner with them, follows Robbie out the door on his way to school, hunching Antonia’s shoulders as she sits on the side of their bed to brush her hair at night. The work Antonia must have had to do to love him all these years strikes Paolo like a bag of cement to the chest.

“Yes.”

“What did he do?”

“Well,” says Lina. She leans back in her chair. She raises her drink to her lips. “My husband,” and here she tips the drink to the sky, a toast, “didn’t do a very good job, getting out. So. Why do you bring this up?” She looks at Antonia, whose face is a map. And Lina understands.

“It’s Saul, Mamma,” says Antonia. The words bloom in the air around them like tea leaves; they settle. “Saul has been working for Eli Leibovich. He’s been sneaking—”

Lina waves a hand. The same mess. The same men, getting themselves into inescapable trouble without thinking how they are going to get themselves out.

“I never thought it would be Saul,” she says, looking straight at Paolo. Paolo stares at his glass. He tries not to take it personally.

“Sofia is missing,” says Antonia.

Lina smiles. “How do you know that?”

“I can feel it, Mamma,” says Antonia. “I can just—” She doesn’t know how she knows, really, except that when Saul told her he couldn’t reach Sofia something clicked into place, something caught flame.

“Well,” says Lina, “she might not be missing. She might just be solving the problem.” This feels oblique even for Lina because what, thinks Antonia, could Sofia do? Even Sofia would not be able to solve this inherited problem, this problem every woman who enters into a Family family knows she might someday face.

“I don’t know what you mean,” says Antonia.

Lina looks at Antonia and Paolo. “You know there is nothing you can do. That’s why you came, right? So that I could tell you there is nothing you can do. You are out of options. Saul has made his choices, and he will suffer. We will all suffer,” she says.

“Mamma,” Antonia says, but then falls silent.

Lina drains her cup. “Because there is nothing you can do—there is no right choice—there is no way to get out of this unscathed—there is also no reason for you not to fight for him.” The air in the apartment sits, waiting.

Lina leans forward to look at Antonia. “Don’t let him do to her what your papa did to us. You fight for him. You use everything you have.”

Chapter 30