Lorelei put her face in her hands.
“We don’t know,” Charlotte said. “We’re waiting for more information.”
“Are they going to arrest him?” Nina asked.
Lorelei said, “Aren’t you listening to us?”
Shame filled Nina’s stomach. It was a curse to be so much younger than her siblings, she’d often thought. They would never respect her.
Suddenly, the door between the kitchen and passageway burst open, and Tio Angelo came through. He was sweaty and strange, his hands touching his pockets, tugging at the fabric of his shirt. His eyes couldn’t focus on them when he said, “Where is your mother?”
“She’s talking to the cops, Tio,” Lorelei said.
Tio Angelo straightened up and looked at them. Silence filled the room. “The cops are here?”
None of them answered. But Tio Angelo shot out of the kitchen so fast that he left the door open. Lorelei, Allegra, Charlotte, and then Nina followed him. Nina was half convinced he would run away from the house, as fast and as hard as he could, and never come back. He’d told them he’d been a first-rate champion of sprinting back in Florence, after all. But instead, he steadied himself and walked up to the cops that Francesca was currently half singing, half begging to. Tio Angelo transformed his face into one of a charming Italian man who was a little bit confused. He even upped his Italian accent to make himself seem extra out there.
“Ciao! What seems to be the problem?” he asked the cops.
Francesca was full-on crying, maybe because she hoped the cops would pay attention to her. But they twisted around to look at her brother instead. Nina and her sisters couldn’t hear what the cops were saying to Tio Angelo, but they could hear Tio Angelo plain as anything.
“Are you quite sure about that?” he asked. “I would be happy to show you around the house. Anything you want to see, I will show you.”
“But Angelo!” Francesca cried.
Angelo’s performance deepened. “My darling sister, we must help the authorities. We live in an American society now, and we must cooperate. No?” He then said something in rapid Italian that made Francesca straighten her spine.
What is he saying?Nina wondered. It wasn’t the first time she’d cursed her terrible Italian. Her mother had tried and failed to teach her when she was six or seven, but Francesca had been too impatient, and Nina had been too daydreamy. They’d failed.
Tio Angelo led the cops into the kitchen of the family apartment. Nina, her sisters, Francesca, and Benjamin followed them in. The kitchen could hardly hold all of them, so Tio brought them deeper into the house, explaining to them the architecture of the old place and reciting stories that Benjamin had told him about old whalers and passionate outdoorspeople.
“I’ve never been in here,” one of the cops said, clearly fascinated, looking up at the crown molding. “I always wondered what it was like.”
One of the cops nudged him and gave him a look that meantkeep your head in the game.
Tio Angelo led the cops away from the kitchen, down the passageway, opening doors and explaining things. Nina, her sisters, and her parents hung back in the kitchen, wordless, listening hard. Nina thought she’d never seen her father that pale and green, and her mother kept moving her lips to form rapid Italian words, almost as though she were praying. But not long into his mini-tour, Angelo suggested that he cook dinner for all of them, including the cops. “It’s my mother’s recipe from Tuscany,” he explained, music in his tone, light in his voice. “Because Francesca and I started a garden right here at the side of the White Oak Lodge, our ingredients are top level and stellar. I think my recipe combines the best of Nantucket and the best of Tuscany. Would you like to give it a try?”
For most of the cops, it wasn’t a hard sell.
Before long, Nina was shooed out of the kitchen to make room for the cops. Benjamin and Francesca cracked open beers and played perfect hosts while Tio Angelo showed them the best way to slice a clove of garlic and told them hilarious stories from the old country.
“Is it true that your father was a filmmaker?” one of the cops asked, taking a slice of bread drizzled in olive oil and eating it in a single bite.
“It’s true,” Tio Angelo said. “Francesca and I were practically raised on a film set. It was difficult to grow up and realize not everything was always so spectacular. Right, sis?”
Nina was listening to everything from the living room next door. Allegra, Charlotte, Lorelei, and even Alexander sat with her, expectant, their heads tilted. Something strange was going on, but none of them knew how to explain it.
When Tio’s immaculate pasta was spiced to perfection and splayed out on a beautiful plate, the cops dug in and fell silent. Nina had had Tio Angelo’s food many times and knew how delightful it was—about twice as good as her mother’s and far better than anything she’d ever tried at an Italian restaurant.
One of the cops groaned. “This is the best food I’ve ever had.”
“What is that? Linguine?” one of them asked.
“It is fettuccine,” Angelo explained with a sharpness to his voice that, Nina knew, served as judgment that these silly Americans didn’t know their pasta shapes.
As the cops finished their meals, the kitchen door opened, and Jack hollered ciao. But the “ciao” died out just as quickly when, apparently, he walked through the door and saw the cops sitting at the kitchen table with his uncle and mother and father.
“What’s all this?” Nina heard Jack ask. She could picture his confused face.