Page 21 of Ricardo

I look toward the open door, where the headless soldier remains on the lawn. “You have made an excellent start.”

Dante grins again. “The statue is growing on you. Admit it.”

“The statue is leaving before dinner.”

“Tomasso will mourn.”

“Tomasso will survive.”

“He’ll write a convincing speech. It’s how he got it here in the first place.”

“I’ll leave before he gives it.”

Dante laughs, and for a moment, I see the boy he used to be. Then I see the man he is becoming, and the feeling in my chest is not unpleasant, exactly. It is only sharper than I expect it to be.

He watches me for a second, his expression quieter now. “It’s good to have everyone together.”

“Yes,” I say. “It is.”

“Even if we drive each other insane.”

“That part is guaranteed.”

He pushes away from the staircase and glances toward the hall. “Come on. Why don’t I give you a tour before the food gets here?”

I look once more around the foyer, at the boxes, the mattress, the statue through the open door, and my son standing in the middle of all of it as if this disaster is already home.

“All right,” I say. “Show me what else I should be concerned about.”

Chapter Three

Julia

The invitation comes through my mother, but it's not really an invitation.

It is a text at 10:37 in the morning while I am at my desk outside Mario’s office, sorting through a stack of contracts.

Dinner tonight. 7:00. Your father expects you. Dress properly. Hugh and Bunny Vanderbilt will be joining us.

No hello. No question mark. No room for a response except obedience.

I read it twice, even though there is nothing complicated about it, then set my phone face down beside my keyboard and stare at the first page of the contract until the words stop blurring into a block of black print.

Your father expects you.

Of course he does.

Judge Patrick O’Brien has always expected things. Silence at the right time. Smiles in the right rooms. The right dress, the right school, the right friends, the right fiancé, the right life. My mother expects them too, though she phrases her expectations with softer words and better lighting.

I do not want to go.

That is the first honest thought.

The second is that I will.

By 6:45, I am sitting in the back of a car in a black dress that is too formal for dinner with one’s parents and exactly formal enough for dinner with my parents. The fabric skims rather than clings. The neckline is modest. The sleeves are fitted. My hair is twisted into a low knot at the nape of my neck, and I am wearing pearl earrings my mother gave me when I turned twenty-one because she said diamonds at dinner look desperate before marriage.

I wore them so I would not have to hear about what I chose instead.