“No, no! It wasn’t me! It was all Maria’s idea!”
14
Maria jumped up to go see who had come in, and Sarah followed, stopping in the doorway. Maria had found Lorenzo in the hall, and Sarah felt a frisson of alarm. Why was he here?
“Lorenzo,” Maria said with what sounded like relief.
“You are back.”
“They let me go,” he said simply. “The baby?”
As if he’d given the fatal pluck to the taut string holding Maria together, she gave an incoherent cry, threw herself against his chest and began to sob. His arms came around her instantly, holding her to him. His hands moved gently over her back, both comforting and caressing, and Sarah watched mesmerized as his face contorted with what looked like pain.
She remembered yesterday, when she had sobbed against Malloy’s chest. His hands had moved on her the way Lorenzo’s moved on Maria—tenderly, possessively. Had his face been like that, too, twisted with the agony of a desire he could not fulfill? Suddenly, Lorenzo’s interest in helping Maria with the baby was crystal clear.
Sarah must have gasped aloud because Lorenzo’s eyes flew open, and he saw her standing in the doorway. Rage replaced whatever emotions he had been feeling.
“What’s she doing here?” he demanded, disentangling himself from Maria and setting her away from him discreetly.
“Maria sent for me,” Sarah defended herself. “The baby was sick.”
“How dare you show your face here after what you’ve done?” His own face was scarlet, but whether from anger only or because he felt shame at what she’d seen, she couldn’t tell.
Maria was scrubbing the tears from her face with the back of her hand and trying to catch her breath. “Mama gave permission,” she informed him. “The baby is sick. What else could I do?”
“You could send for a doctor,” Lorenzo said impatiently.
“A doctor wouldn’t care if he lived or died,” Maria argued.
“And she would?” he challenged, gesturing dismissively at Sarah.
“Yes.”
Her confidence set him aback, but he didn’t contradict her. Sarah could see the inner battle between pride and honor and his feelings for his brother’s wife. Maria won. He glanced around. “Where is the baby?”
“Sleeping,” Maria said. “She gave him some medicine.”
He glared at Sarah, as if he resented the fact that she’d helped. “Then she can leave now.”
Sarah was only too happy to oblige. Why had Malloy let him go? He must have discovered that Lorenzo wasn’t Nainsi’s lover. “I just need to give Maria the medicine and some instructions for the next few days.”
“Good,” he said, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out some money. “Here, this is for your medicine . . . and for your time.” He thrust it into her hand, then headed down the hall toward the interior stairway.
He’d intended to make her feel inferior, and he’d suc-ceeded in making her furious.
“He is upset,” Maria said apologetically. “There was a fight in the restaurant, and he was taken by the police this afternoon.”
Sarah didn’t think that justified his being rude to her, but then she remembered Joe had been taken with him. “I wonder if your husband came back with him.” How odd Maria hadn’t even asked about him.
Maria shrugged, as if she didn’t care. “Did Lorenzo give you enough money for the medicine?” she asked.
Sarah looked down at her palm. “Yes, more than enough.”
“Then tell me what I must do.”
“ What do you mean, it was Maria’s idea?” Frank asked, glaring intently at Joe.
Joe’s gaze flitted wildly around the room, as if he were desperately trying to find a way to escape. Frank slapped the table again to get his attention.
“Joe! What was Maria’s idea?”
“She said . . . she said we couldn’t let the baby go.”
Frank stared at him incredulously. “You told her the baby was yours?”
“I had to! I didn’t know what else to do!”
Frank could think of a lot of options, none of which involved telling his wife he’d gotten a girl pregnant, but it was too late to point any of them out to Joe. Frank glanced at Gino. The young man’s jaw was hanging open, so Frank gave him a glare, silently warning him to shut his mouth and keep it shut.
“Let me make sure I understand,” Frank said, letting his voice express only curiosity now. “You met Nainsi at a dance house and got her pregnant.”
“I didn’t mean to, but . . . She wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“Are you saying she came after you?” Frank asked skeptically.
Joe had the grace to look ashamed. “She liked me. She wanted to get married. I told her she was too young, but she . . . she still wanted to.”
“You could’ve told her you were already married,” Frank reminded him.
Joe’s expression was pained. “She was pretty . . . and fun.”
“So you didn’t tell her because you wanted to keep poking her,” Frank said with contempt.
“She wanted it! She told me she did,” he insisted.
“Or maybe she just wanted to get a baby so you’d have to marry her,” Frank suggested. “And then she did. What did you say when she told you, Joe?”
Joe rubbed his sleeve across his damp forehead. “I told her I couldn’t get married. I told her my mother wouldn’t allow me to marry an Irish girl.”
“But she kept bothering you, didn’t she?” Frank guessed.
“Maybe she even came to the restaurant.”
Joe’s eyes widened in surprise that he had figured this out. “I didn’t think she knew who I was, but she found out somehow. She came by one day, and Maria saw her. I sent her away, but Maria knew. She always finds out everything. I thought she’d be mad at me, but she was only mad because I had given a baby to this girl instead of to her.”
Frank thought that sounded strange, but he didn’t say so.
“So Maria was only worried about the baby?”
“She said it was our family. She said we couldn’t let strangers raise it.”
Frank resisted the urge to glance at Gino. He’d said Italians were devoted to their families, but even so, this seemed a bit much. “So you suggested that Antonio could marry the girl.”
“No, no, I didn’t know what to do. It was Maria. She said Antonio was too young to know anything, and we could trick him. She said he would think the baby was his, and he would marry Nainsi. Then the baby would be in our family, and we could take care of it. She said it was the right thing to do.”
Just when Frank thought he was beginning to understand women a little, something like this happened. “So you’re claiming it was Maria’s idea for you to take Antonio to the dance house and . . . Did Nainsi know all this? Did she know you were going to trick Antonio into marrying her?”
Joe swallowed and rubbed a hand across his mouth.
“I . . . Yes, she . . . I had to tell her! She had to . . . to make him think the baby was his.”
Frank didn’t bother to hide his disgust. “And she just went along with it?”
“She was scared . . . because of the baby. She needed to get married soon. But she . . . she didn’t like it,” he admitted.
“I’m sure she didn’t,” Frank said. “But she went along with it anyway.”
Joe seemed to shrink into himself. “She said . . . she said she liked the revenge of having my baby under Maria’s nose.”
Now that was the only part of the story that sounded reasonable to Frank. “And what did Maria think about it once Nainsi was living in your house?”
“Oh, she was happy about the baby,” Joe assured him hastily. “And she was nice to Nainsi. Maria is a good woman.”
Nobody was that good, Frank thought. If Nainsi wanted revenge, what did Maria want? “You must’ve been nervous when your mother figured out Antonio wasn’t the baby’s father and wanted to throw Nainsi and the baby out.”