I Came Out Of Prison To Find My Husband Having A Wedding To Another Woman

I didn't take the keys to Mulberry Street.

I took a cab to Bensonhurst instead, to the only Moretti who had ever told me the truth.

Uncle Aldo was Dante's father's older brother. Eighty-one, half blind, and still running numbers out of the back of a bakery on Eighteenth Avenue. He used to slip me cannoli when I was nineteen and too scared to speak at Sunday dinners.

The girl behind the counter waved me through. Aldo sat at a card table in the back, a cup of espresso by his elbow.

He looked up, and his cup hit the saucer so hard it cracked.

"Madonna."

"Hi, Zio."

He didn't stand. His hand found the edge of the table and gripped it, knuckles going white.

"You're dead," he said.

I almost smiled. "Prison food's bad, but it's not that bad."

"No." He shook his head, slowly at first, then faster. "No, I was there. I stood by the hole. I threw dirt on the box."

The room tilted.

"What box?"

"Yours." His voice went rough. "Dante called the family together in September. Said you got sick inside. Pneumonia. Said the prison buried the news because of a lawsuit. He did the whole thing. Mass at St. Finbar. Burial at Green-Wood."

"And nobody checked?"

"Who checks?" Aldo spread his hands. "The boss says his wife is dead, the family mourns. That's how it works. He cried, Rhea. In front of everybody. I never saw him cry since he was six."

I sat down in the chair across from him. I didn't decide to. My legs just quit.

"September," I repeated.

"The twentieth."

Six months ago. The same month the photo on my nightstand said Bianca was six months along.

He'd buried me so he could bury the scandal. A boss doesn't take a mistress. A widower takes a new wife.

"What section?" I asked.

Aldo's cloudy eyes searched my face. "Don't go there, bella."

"What section, Zio?"

He sighed and told me.

On the way out, I stopped at the hardware store on the corner. The man at the register rang up a claw hammer and didn't ask questions.

---

Green-Wood closed at five. I got there at four-fifteen.

The Moretti plot sat on a hill near the back. Dante's parents. His grandparents. A big marble angel with chipped wings.

And beside them, a new headstone. Black granite. Polished so bright I could see myself in it.

*RHEA MORETTI*

*BELOVED WIFE*

Under the words, set into the stone in a little oval of porcelain, was our wedding photo. Amalfi. Me in my mother's veil, him with his forehead against mine. Both of us laughing at something the photographer said.

Fresh lilies leaned against the base. Someone still came here.

I crouched and touched the letters. *Beloved*. The granite was cold and smooth, and somebody had paid a lot of money to make my name look that pretty.

"You picked lilies," I said to nobody. "I hate lilies."

The wind moved through the trees. I stood up.

I pulled the hammer out of the plastic bag.

The first swing caught the edge of the porcelain. It cracked down the middle, right between our faces.

The second swing shattered it.

The third sent white chips skittering across the grass like teeth.

I kept going. Over and over, until there was nothing in that oval but a jagged gray hole and my arms were burning and my breath came out in sobs I didn't recognize.

"Rhea!"

Tires spun on the gravel path below. A car door slammed.

Dante came up the hill at a run, tie gone, jacket flapping open. Marco trailed behind him, out of breath.

"Stop. *Stop!*"

He grabbed my arm mid-swing. I yanked free and turned on him with the hammer still raised.

He froze.

For a second, we just stood there. Him panting. Me shaking. The broken stone between us.

"Aldo called you," I said.

"He was worried."

"About me? Or about you?"

Dante's eyes dropped to the wreck of the headstone. His throat moved.

"Jesus, Rhea."

"You had a Mass for me." I laughed, and it sounded wet. "Did they play 'Ave Maria'? I always wanted 'Ave Maria.'"

"Put the hammer down."

"Did you give a eulogy? What did you say? 'She was loyal'? 'She'd do anything for me'?" My voice climbed. "Because that part's true. I did do anything. I did *everything*."

"I had no choice."

"You always say that."

"The feds were circling." He took a careful step toward me, palms out, like I was a dog that might bite. "Your case kept coming up. Reporters asking why the Moretti wife wasn't getting visits. If you were dead, the story died with you. It was cleaner."

"Cleaner." I tasted the word. "And Bianca? Was she cleaner too?"

His mouth tightened. "Leave her out of this."

"She's wearing my combs, Dante. She's sleeping on my side of the bed. She threw out my grandmother's quilt. Don't tell me to leave her out."

Marco cleared his throat behind him. "Boss, a groundskeeper's coming."

Dante didn't turn. His eyes stayed on me. They'd gone soft, the way they used to before he asked me for something.

"Come home with me," he said quietly. "Not Mulberry. Home. We'll figure it out. I'll fix this. I'll fix the paperwork, the records, all of it. Nobody has to know—"

"Nobody has to know what? That your wife is alive?"

"That I made a mistake."

I stared at him.

Then I did something that surprised us both.

I reached out and took his hand. His fingers were warm. They closed around mine on instinct.

I pressed the hammer into his palm and folded his fingers over the handle.

"Here," I said.

He looked down at it. Confused.

"You bought the stone. You should finish the job." I stepped back. "You're already a widower, Dante. You cried at my grave. You threw dirt on my box. So don't you dare come to me asking to be my husband."

His hand hung at his side, the hammer heavy in it.

"Rhea, if you walk away—"

"I already did. You just didn't notice. You were busy picking out lilies."

I turned and started down the hill.

Behind me, I heard him say my name once. Then nothing.

I was halfway to the gate when Marco caught up with me. He was pale, sweat on his upper lip, and he kept glancing back toward the plot.

"Rhea. Wait." He grabbed my sleeve and lowered his voice. "You need to know something before you go anywhere tonight."

"What?"

He swallowed hard.

"That box we buried in September?" he whispered. "It wasn't empty."