Peril

DELLA

She could hardly believe the urgency in her mother’s voice, the way she’d demanded that she drop everything, pack Nicky into his car seat, and come right away. You’d have thought her house was on fire.

But the house looked just the same when Della brought the car to a halt in front of it. Despite the chill, her mother was sitting on the stoop, loosely wrapped in an old wool coat, and looking uncharacteristically tense.

“What is it, Ma?” Della cried as she got out of the car.

Mrs. DaRocca stood up immediately. “Just come on in,” she said harshly.

Della scurried to the other side of the car and whisked Nicky out of the car seat. By the time she’d turned back toward the house, her mother had already disappeared inside.

“I got to talk to you, Della,” Mrs. DaRocca said once Della came into the house.

“Okay, so, talk,” Della said. Nicky squirmed madly in her arms. “It’s past his nap time.”

Mrs. DaRocca waved Della into the living room. “In here.”

Della followed her mother into the living room and slumped down on the old blue sofa by the window. “You okay, Ma?”

“I’m fine,” Mrs. DaRocca said. “It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Me?”

“Because of that neighbor of yours,” Mrs. DaRocca said. “The one who took off. She didn’t turn up yet, did she?”

“No,” Della said. “What’s going on, Ma?”

Rather than answer directly, Mrs. DaRocca said, “Stay out of it, Della. ’Cause it’s not safe, getting involved in it.”

Della studied the worried look on her mother’s face. “What happened, Ma? And don’t say nothing happened, because I know something did.”

Mrs. DaRocca shrugged. “I talked to him.”

“Him?”

“Labriola.”

“Tony?” Della shrieked. “Why?”

“Not Tony,” Mrs. DaRocca said. “The father.”

Della’s eyes widened in astonishment. “You what?”

“I went to his house,” Mrs. DaRocca continued. “I spoke to Leonardo.”

“Leonardo? You call him Leonardo? What, you know him somehow?”

“A little,” Mrs. DaRocca said without emphasis. “From the old days.”

“What old days?”

“In school. We was in school together. Our Lady of Fatima. We was-how you call it? — chummy.”

Della sat back, drained by astonishment. “Chummy? You and Leo Labriola?”

“He was a nice boy in them days,” Mrs. DaRocca said. Then her face turned grave. “But not no more. Which is why I’m telling you to stay out of this thing with the neighbor.”

She felt her mother’s dread wash toward her like a wave of blood across the floor. “What happened, Ma? What happened when you talked to

… Leonardo?”

“Nothing happened,” Mrs. DaRocca answered. “But you get a feeling when you talk to a person, and the feeling I got was you should stay out of his business. It’s got nothing to do with you, that woman.”

“Except that she’s my friend.”

Mrs. DaRocca looked at Della with all the authority of an old-world mother. “Della, stay out of this.”

Her mother’s words were heavy with warning, and because of it, she knew.

“He’s going to hurt her,” she said. “Labriola’s going to hurt Sara.”

“He didn’t say that,” Mrs. DaRocca said quickly. “He didn’t say nothing like that, Della.”

“But you saw it, didn’t you? You saw it in his eyes.”

Mrs. DaRocca didn’t answer, but the truth was in the grim look on her face, the stiff posture. The old fear of Sicily lay upon her shoulders as thick and visible as the black scarves of women she’d seen in pictures from the island.

“Would he kill her?” she asked.

“Della, he didn’t-”

“Ma, listen to me. You spoke to him face-to-face. Would he kill her?”

Her mother didn’t speak, but the slow crawl of her hand to her throat provided the only answer Della needed to glimpse her best friend floating facedown in the river.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

The old woman placed her hand on Della’s. “Listen to me,” she said. “It ain’t your business. She left her husband. That ain’t your business. Even what Leo does about it, Della, even that ain’t your business.”

Della thought of Sara, then of Labriola. She had not been able to imagine why Sara had left Tony, nor why Labriola was so determined to find her. Now she could.

“It ain’t your business,” her mother repeated.

Della rose to her feet. “Yes, it is,” she said.