Page 155 of The Mafia's Christmas Baby

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“We,” I correct. “Your handwriting on a café slip bought me half the room.”

“Citrus scones bought you the rest,” she says.

“Rosa would disagree,” I say. “She’d say decent human behavior bought me an old ledger and a clean exit.”

“She’d be wrong,” she says. “It was the scone.”

We reach our block.

My building looks like every other building on the street and like a home when you tilt your head.

The van that used to love our curb is gone.

The sedan that pretended to be a sedan is someone else’s problem.

The doorman who isn’t a doorman nods like my face makes his day calmer.

Upstairs, the folder is still on the table.

We don’t open it.

We let it rest.

She loosens her coat, hangs it.

I take mine off and lay it over the back of a chair the way my mother taught me not to.

“You did good,” she says.

“Don’t say that,” I say. “Makes me nervous.”

“Fair,” she says. “You did adequate with flair.”

“Better,” I say.

I draw her close.

Not for heat.

For the math of it.

Two bodies, one room, no noise we don’t choose.

“Tomorrow,” she says, voice light around the edges, “we call the doctor and the pediatrician and my mother.”

“In that order,” I say.

“She’ll pretend she didn’t already guess,” she says. “She will bring soup and questions.”

“I will answer the soup and avoid the questions,” I say.

“We can do both,” she says.

We sit.

We eat bread because bread is what you eat when your life just tilted and you want it to stop.

It tastes like lemon and yeast and clean hands.

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