The Woman in the Back Room (Costa Family)

"That's not a... inaccurate description," he admitted.

"And he likes that his uncle is around a lot more lately. And Brio. Which leaves me to wonder why you let that fucking lunatic around your impressionable kid."

"I let you around him," he countered, shooting me a smirk as he waved at the mess of the living room.

"Well, yeah, I guess that's fair," I admitted. "Though, in my defense, I've never made polite dinner conversation by talking about modernizing medieval torture techniques."

"So, supervised visits with Ott—Avi only. Got it," Santi agreed, rolling his neck.

"You look tired. Go to bed. I'll clean up my mess."

"Different kind of tired," he admitted.

I wasn't exactly an ask-you-about-your-feelings kind of person. My mother had been a selfish woman. My father was nonexistent until I was nearly an adult with the stunted emotional spectrum of a street kid who had no safe space to explore their feelings. I wasn't that person.

And yet I found myself asking.

"How're you holding up?" I asked. "With the dead wife thing and all." Alright, admittedly, I could see how that was the wrong word choice. But not until they were already out of my mouth.

Luckily, Santiago didn't seem the type to get offended too easily. "Might want to not put it that way in front of Ott—Avi," he suggested. "Brit and I weren't together. We hadn't been. Not for a long time."

"But I thought she lived here."

"She did. But not in my room. Not in my bed. We were trying to ease Avi into the idea of a divorce. But we'd been separated for a long time. I loved her as the mother of my son. But not the way a man is supposed to love a woman."

Now that he mentioned it, he didn't have a ring on. I don't know why I hadn't noticed that earlier. I wonder if his son had. Somehow, I doubted that was a detail he would have missed. If they didn't have rings, and didn't share a room, and didn't show any intimacy at all, did they really think they were fooling the kid into thinking they were still together?

"You got together early, right?"

"We dated in high school. We'd both pretty much been ready to break up. But then—"

"The rabbit died?"

"What?" he asked, the word a half-laugh.

"Oh, just... it's an old Southern saying, I guess. There was this way people detected pregnancy by injecting a woman's pee into a rabbit. If he died, she was pregnant. It was bullshit, of course. But a saying was born."

"Forgot you're not from here originally."

"Virginia, yeah. That's where old Gio Sr. knocked up a local prostitute while his wife slaved over his children at home."

"What made you leave her, and come up here?"

"You ready for this conversation?" I asked, folding my legs under me.

"Not much shocks me."

"My mother had the maternal instincts of a cuckoo."

"A cuckoo?"

"It's a bird."

"I thought birds were good mothers. With the whole throwing up food into the babies' mouths and shit."

"Cuckoos can't be bothered to mother. They lay their eggs in another bird's nest, and has her do all the rearing."

"Yeah, not great. That's what your mom did?"

"Inadvertently. She went out, and eventually my relentless crying would get one of the neighbors to break in and take care of me. Eventually, I got old enough to find some food on my own. Then she really had no need to look after me. Until I turned seventeen, though."

"What happened when you turned seventeen?"

"She decided she would pay her debt to her pimp by giving him me."

"Jesus Christ."

"Yeah, luckily I caught wind of her plan before she could carry through with it, grabbed a backpack and what was left of her drug money, and hightailed it the fuck out of there. And here I am," I said, waving around his apartment. "Does it bother you to have the feral daughter of a prostitute taking care of your kid?"

"Who am I to judge? My father had my mother imprisoned for almost my entire life."

"I heard about that. That story was fucking bananas."

"Yeah, imagine seeing that ghost show up at your doorstep twenty-something years later."

"Lot of changes in your lives lately."

"Not all of 'em good," Santi agreed, exhaling a deep breath. "He's crying a lot. But won't talk to me about it."

"I don't know about you, but I don't like people seeing me cry, either," I said, shrugging. "I mean I just met the kid, but he seems to be doing okay considering. If he doesn't, I will say something."

"I'd appreciate it."

"So what are the rules and shit?" I asked. "I don't know much about what happened with your... with Avi's mom, but the gist I'm getting is that everyone thinks it is involved with the little war going on between the Families."

"Brit and I were standing out front of the building," he said. I hadn't exactly asked for the details. But I figured no one had let him talk about it since it happened. I guess we all needed an outlet. And I was a safe one since he didn't give a shit what I thought about the whole situation. "She caught me going in as she was coming out. We were both short on time. And temper," he recalled, eyes far away as he stared out the darkened windows. "We got into it over some stupid shit."