Chapter 2 - THE PHOTOGRAPH BEHIND THE FLOUR TIN
Nora returned home at 11:46 that night with two hundred dollars in an envelope and Dante Gallo's phone number written on the back of a restaurant receipt.
She hadn't asked for either.
The money came from Salvatore, who insisted it compensated her for the evening's lost tips.
The number came from Dante.
“Call if anyone bothers you,” he had said.
Nora had looked at him.
“Does that include your family?”
He'd held her gaze.
“Especially my family.”
Now, standing inside her apartment in Bridgeport, she wasn't sure whether to be grateful or terrified.
Her home was a second-floor walk-up with one bedroom, a narrow living room, and a kitchen window facing the brick wall of another building.
Pietro had lived there for twenty-one years.
After his death, Nora kept the lease because she couldn't bear to leave the only place that had ever felt permanent.
She set down her purse.
Then walked to the kitchen.
The old flour tin still sat above the refrigerator.
Pietro had hidden everything important in ordinary places.
Cash inside cookbooks.
Medical records beneath dish towels.
A photograph behind a flour tin.
Nora climbed onto a chair.
She reached for the tin.
Her fingers touched the dusty metal.
And she remembered the last conversation she'd had with her grandfather.
He had been lying in a hospital bed, breathing through a plastic tube.
“Nora,” he'd whispered.
She'd leaned closer.
“If a Gallo ever comes looking, you mustn't tell him who you are.”
She'd thought it was fever.
“Nonno, nobody's looking for me.”
His fingers had closed around hers.
“Promise.”
She had promised because dying people deserved comfort.
Now she wished she'd asked why.
The photograph was still there.
Agata beneath the orange tree.
Young.
Beautiful.
Smiling.
Nora turned it over.
Forgive me, Agata.
But beneath those words, nearly invisible in faded pencil, was another line.
The child must never know.
Nora sat down.
The apartment seemed suddenly too quiet.
She looked at the photograph again.
Her father, Daniel Rossi, had died when she was nine.
At least that was what Pietro told her.
A construction accident in Pennsylvania.
No funeral.
No grave she'd ever visited.
Her mother, according to Pietro, had died giving birth.
There were no photographs of either parent together.
No wedding certificate.
No family friends who remembered them.
Only Pietro.
And his stories.
Nora picked up her phone.
She found Dante's number.
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
Then she put it down.
She wasn't ready to invite the Gallo family into her apartment.
Instead, she opened the old wooden cabinet beneath the kitchen sink.
Inside sat a locked metal box.
Pietro had forbidden her to touch it.
After his death, she'd tried opening it twice.
Neither attempt succeeded.
Tonight, she carried it to the table.
She examined the hinges.
The lock.
The small brass plate beneath the handle.
Then she noticed something she'd missed before.
Seven tiny scratches.
Not random.
Numbers.
1-9-9-8-0-4-2.
A date.
April 2, 1998.
Nora tried the combination.
The lock clicked.
Inside lay a yellowed envelope, a child's hospital bracelet, and a cassette tape.
The bracelet carried a name.
NORA AGATA GALLO.
Nora stared until the letters blurred.
Then the lights went out.
Not just the kitchen.
The entire apartment.
Somewhere downstairs, a door slammed.
Nora heard footsteps climbing the stairs.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Then someone stopped outside her door.
May you like
A man's voice whispered:
“She's opened the box.”
