Lina will regret her answer to this question for the rest of her life. She looks up at Antonia and before she realizes what she is saying, blurts out, “It’s his fault your father is dead.”

—

As an act of survival, Antonia does not believe this. Having lived with the empty shell of her mother for a full week before this funeral, she knows that if it is Uncle Joey’s fault her father is dead, she will have no family left at all.

Chapter 5

For many weeks after Carlo disappeared, Lina’s mother stayed with her and Antonia, and held Lina’s hand when Lina woke wailing, sure the ground had disappeared, sure her face had aged a hundred years, disappointed she had fallen asleep at all. Her mother would hum and stroke Lina’s forearm and Lina was okay, because she was a baby again.

And then, as the days grew shorter and colder, Lina’s mother packed her bag. “You can’t be miserable forever,” she said to Lina. “You have a child to take care of.”

Lina’s mother kissed Antonia, who tended to hover in the corner of every room. And she left.

And then for a while Rosa would come over. And instead of being a baby, Lina would get angry. “Why did we marry these men?” she asked. Rosa did not answer, because there was no answer. She had never considered not marrying one of These Men. “Why didn’t you stop me, why didn’t you say something?” Lina asked Rosa. And eventually Rosa, too, was tired, and she had her own family to take care of, and she was always nauseous in those early days of pregnancy. So Rosa kissed Antonia. She said, “Come over anytime, baby.” She went home.

And Lina was so relieved.

She was so relieved to be left alone.

—

Four weeks after a priest wishes Carlo eternal rest and perpetual light, Lina announces that she will worship no god who has killed her husband. She spends Sunday afternoons and Christmas Eve with works of fiction (“Other works of fiction,” she says, “than the one you spend your Sundays with!”) and long, lovingly dog-eared volumes of poetry. She fills their apartment with stacks of books; no bookshelves, but books lined up along the walls, hidden in cupboards, holding up a lame coffee table, layered between winter scarves in the front closet.