The Night He Let Our Baby Die

He was gone for several days without coming home.

It was starting to look like another cold war, the kind the old families waged in silence, where no shots were fired but everyone in the house felt the chill. If this had been before, I'd have been a mess, constantly replaying every little detail in my head, wondering if I'd raised my voice too much, if I'd disturbed him in the small hours when he came in smelling of the clinic, if his supper hadn't been to his liking, or if I'd put too much weight on his shoulders. I'd have been lost in self-doubt and second-guessing, turning each word over like a debt I couldn't account for.

But now, I actually enjoyed the quiet of the house with Marco away from it.

Seeing him from outside that poisoned circle, he looked like a man with something rotted inside him. Quick to temper, forever putting others beneath him, forever preaching as if the rest of us owed him the ground he stood on. The made man's wife I'd been would have called it pressure. From this distance, I called it what it was.

I used to hurry back to the apartment after my hours at the Family's front office were done, terrified Marco might come home to an empty set of rooms and take it as a slight. All that fear and worry now felt like tribute paid to no one. It had only soothed me while it sharpened his irritation.

Without his constraints hanging over the rooms, I poured myself into my work.

I landed a promising operation through the Family's legitimate side, and the men above me said that if I handled it clean, my cut would double and there would be real opportunity to rise, to be trusted with territory of my own. The praise warmed something in me that Marco had let go cold. I was glad of it, and I stayed long past the hour, studying the market, weighing one ledger against another, learning the shape of the thing the way you learn the face of someone you intend to outlast.

By the time the operation was wrapped and signed off, I realized I hadn't reached for Marco once.

I didn't even have to guess where he was.

I found my way to his go-between's page, the girl who ran his errands and warmed more than his appointment book. Gianna posted these artsy, poetic little offerings, soft-lit and aching with meaning. It struck me as pretty pretentious. We were long past that stage of life, Marco and I, past the age where words like that meant anything but performance.

But Marco seemed to eat it up.

I saw a post from her, her gold chain catching the light at her throat in the photo. [I really envy her for meeting someone as amazing as you are so early. If, and I mean if, you'd met me even a minute sooner, would you have chosen to love me?]

No surprise. Marco had replied, [Yes.]