My mom, Mabel Brennan, had never once left our small inland town, so when my brother Nino Brennan got into college in Kingsport, I talked her into coming along to see the city. The day they landed, I was buried in an accounts meeting at the Cassano Hotel Group, so I turned to my husband, Kane Mercer, home on vacation, and asked him, "You're off in two days. Could you pick up my mom and Nino from the station?" He didn't look up from his game, sunk deep into the couch. "No time." On the video call, Mabel had been rattling off all the things she wanted to bring us, and her voice cut off. A moment later, she smiled and covered for him, "It's fine, we'll find our own ride. Kane's been on his feet in that kitchen all year. Let him rest." Something bitter twisted in my chest. Then I turned and caught Kane making a soft promise to Vivian Ashford, "Don't worry, I'll drive Lucy up to Kingsport myself. We pass through a few family territories on the way, but I know people everywhere. Nothing will happen to her." Lucy Ashford was Vivian's little sister, coming to Kingsport for a visit. Kane was ready to drive 750 miles to go pick her up. His game ended, and he got up to grab his car keys. On the screen, Mabel was still bright with a careful, tentative excitement, "I brought your favorite pickles, and I knitted Kane ten pairs of wool socks. His feet must ache, standing in that kitchen all day." My eyes stung. And all at once, I didn't want this husband anymore.

My mother, Caterina Moretti, was diagnosed with stage two breast cancer. That same day, my father's mistress came to our door, Bianca Russo, the one he'd kept hidden in Palermo's old quarter for more than twenty years. Two soldiers in black suits set a white lily wreath at the foot of Caterina's bed. Gold Latin had been burned into the black ribbon: May she rest in peace. Bianca took Caterina's hand and smiled like she was receiving a blessing in church. "Caterina, don't you worry. Once you're resting in the family tomb, I'll raise Aria like my own." Then she turned to me. "Aria, you've worn yourself thin all these years, running the Moretti docks and keeping the olive oil books. From here on, leave it all to Marco. "Don't worry. You're Lorenzo's blood after all, and blood runs thicker than water. I'll send you a thousand dollars a month, enough for you and your mother to take a little apartment beside the convent." Two sentences, and she'd cast Caterina and me out of our own home. She erased the thirty years Caterina had endured at his side, at the docks, in the lemon groves, at the family table. My father stood in the doorway, silent. Caterina looked at him through her tears, and he didn't say a word. My father spared me one flat glance. "Stay with your mother and take care of her. Leave the family's business to your new mother." Then they were gone. I looked at Caterina shaking on the bed, sobbing, and I called Ricci, the family's consigliere. Three months later, Bianca was on her knees in front of me, begging me to spare her and her boy.