Page 64 of Blood Orange Christmas
“Why?”
“Because I’m taking my knife back,” she says. “And every time you reach for it, I’m going to ask you if you’re cooking or cutting your own future to pieces.”
I huff out something that isn’t quite a laugh and isn’t quite a sob. “Deal.”
She squeezes my fingers once. “Then we start tomorrow,” she says. “With coffee. And with you telling our son the truth when he wakes.”
“What truth?” I ask.
She leans in. Her breath is lemon and heat and something like mercy. “That you’re here now,” she says. “And you’re staying.”
26
SERENA
Ayear later
The kitchen is smaller now. That’s the point. Four burners, two ovens, one sink that sighs when you lean into it and a hood that rattles on windy days like a friendly ghost. The prep table is an old door sanded smooth and set on sturdy legs. The walls are the warm yellow of egg yolks and candlelight. Every corner smells like lemon peel and clean wood. When the morning sun slides through the back window and hits the copper pans, the whole room blushes.
It is Christmas Eve again, but a different one. I stand at my station with a bowl of semolina under my hands, working it with the kind of patience I used to save for surviving. Flour dust rises in little halos. I feel steady and useful. Dante is at the other end of the table, slicing garlic as if it’s a meditation, thin, thinner, thinnest—paper slivers that will melt into oil and make it sing. Marco is beside me on a stool, serious as a surgeon, rolling gnocchi down the tines of a fork and flicking each little pillow onto a floured tray.
“Light hands,” I tell him. “Let the dough be itself.”
He nods like I just told him how to lift a car. He tries again, softer. The next piece lands with a tiny dignity. Dante looks over and can’t help smiling. “Perfetto,” he says. “You could charge admission for that flick.”
He wears a wool coat over a black sweater when he steps out to the front to check the line. No Kevlar under anything. No hard angles. His crown is invisible now, but everyone in our little street feels it when he holds the door for a grandmother and bends to kiss a child’s forehead. The queue is already out to the corner—neighbors, travelers with guidebooks tucked in their pockets, a cab driver who swears he knows someone in every kitchen in Rome, three students who save up all month so they can do this night right. The priest from Santa Maria in Trastevere is there too, hat in his hands, cheeks pink from the cold. He winks at Marco through the glass and Marco winks back like they share a plot.
We call itTrattoria Rosso e Limonebecause we like the way the words taste and because life gave us both—the red heat and the citrus light. The front room holds six tables, two against the brick wall, two under the street window, one long communal table that makes strangers share salt and stories, and a half-moon booth by the hearth that is for families who need a corner to breathe. The bar holds more teacups than spirits. A chalkboard lists the feast, written in my hand and smudged by a hundred little shoulder brushes.
—Fritto misto di mare
—Baccalà mantecato, crostini
—Insalata di polpo, arance e finocchio
—Spaghetti alle vongole
—Pesce spada in umido
—Anguilla alla griglia, glassa di balsamico
—Zuppa di ceci e cozze
—Torta al limone (don’t ask the recipe)
Camilla runs the front like a conductor. She left the phones for a reservation book and a bell that rings softly, and she likes it better. Gabriella owns the floor, three steps ahead of every need. Harrison keeps the books and the donations with a ledger that no longer hides names. Luca delivers produce from the co-op we helped start, crates of tomatoes that still smell of vines, fennel bulbs fat and sweet, lemons with skin like good paper. Rocco runs a youth boxing gym three blocks away. On Saturdays, he teaches a dozen kids how to jab without breaking their future. Even Pippo belongs to the neighborhood now—older, slower, satisfied to nap by the door and flick an ear when the bells ring.
The Accardi empire still exists. It just looks different. Routes turned into refrigerated trucks with a charity logo on the sides. Quick cash turned into microloans for women who cook and don’t have ovens yet. Men who needed work learned how to move seafood at night without breaking the law’s back. The Moretti patriarch sends baskets instead of messages now. We still count our exits, but the door stays open.
I slide a pan of swordfish stew to the back burner. The sauce is a low simmer that smells like tomato and capers and patience. I crack the lid an inch, taste, and add a breath of lemon zest. Dante tilts his head like he tastes it too from across the room. “There she goes,” he says, and when our eyes meet, I feel the quiet bell of the life we built ring once in my chest.
By noon, the front door opens and closes like a heart. Candles bloom on the tables even though it’s day. People shrug off coats, stamp cold out of their shoes, and lean in. We send out plates, steady and happy, fritto that stays crisp, cod as soft as a confession, octopus with orange and fennel that tastes like the good kind of winter. Marco carries bread to the communal table with a solemn face and the posture of a tiny king. “Warm,” he tells a man with hands like sandpaper. “You have to eat it while it’s still telling you its story.” The man laughs and does exactly what he’s told.
Between courses, I catch Dante in the pass and tuck my hand into his coat. It’s a ritual now, me finding him in the heat and the noise to tell him without words that we are still us. He tucks me under his chin and breathes my hair in like a habit that never gets old. “Line at the door is still growing,” he says. “Priest says he told them confession is closed but the trattoria is open.”
“Then we feed them all,” I say, and I mean it.
He nods. “We do.”
