Chapter 2 - The Red Coat and the Rain
The little girl’s red coat was slightly too large for her, the sleeves turned up at the cuffs to reveal a lining of plaid silk. She stood beside Matteo DeLuca with her chin tilted upward, her small jaw set in a line of defiance that mirrored the man beside her with terrifying accuracy.
“Lucia,” Matteo said softly, his voice dropping into a low, resonant cadence that seemed to quiet the background chatter of twenty-six children tearing through paper crafts. “We agreed on thirty minutes.”
“You said there wouldn’t be so many people,” Lucia replied, her eyes darting toward a group of eight-year-olds who were currently engaged in a loud, chaotic negotiation over glue sticks. “They’re noisy.”
“Libraries are allowed to be noisy on Saturday mornings,” Grace said, coming around the edge of the circulation desk with a stack of unbound folders in her arms. She kept her posture relaxed, her eyes warm, deliberately ignoring the two tall, sharp-suited men who had paused near the entrance doors behind Matteo, their hands folded loosely at their waists. “Though I admit, today is a bit of an anomaly. The rain brought everyone inside.”
Matteo’s dark eyes shifted from his niece to Grace. Up close, his features were even harder than the newspaper photographs suggested—a strong, angular jawline shaded by dark stubble, a straight nose that looked as if it had been broken once in his youth, and eyes the color of charred timber. Yet, when he looked down at Lucia, the severity in his face gave way to a subtle, guarded gentleness.
“I’m Grace,” she added, extending a hand toward the little girl first, deliberately bypassing the man whose name could freeze conversations in local coffee shops. “And you must be Lucia.”
The girl looked at Grace’s hand, then up at her face. “How do you know my name?”
“Your uncle called yesterday to ask if we had any books about deep-sea creatures,” Grace lied smoothly, offering a small, secretive smile. In reality, she had taken the call herself, but the voice on the phone had merely identified itself as a representative of the DeLuca estate asking for a private reading corner—a request Grace had politely declined, explaining that public libraries did not reserve rooms for individuals during community story hours.
Matteo’s left eyebrow twitched slightly. He knew she was lying, but he didn’t correct her.
“Do you have them?” Lucia asked, her suspicion wavering slightly. “The anglerfish ones?”
“Third aisle, bottom shelf, right under the section on bioluminescent jellyfish,” Grace said, pointing toward the quiet rear corner of the building where the tall, arched windows looked out over the gray rain of South Philadelphia. “It’s very dark back there. Very quiet.”
Lucia looked at Matteo. “Can we go look?”
“Go ahead,” Matteo said. “Stay where I can see you.”
As the girl scurried down the aisle, her red coat vanishing between the wooden stacks, Matteo turned back to Grace. The silence between them stretched, thick and watchful. The two men by the door remained motionless, their eyes scanning the rain-streaked windows that faced 5th Street.
“You didn’t reserve the corner,” Matteo noted. His tone was not angry, merely observational.
“I don’t reserve public space for private citizens, Mr. DeLuca,” Grace replied, setting her folders on the wooden counter. “If I did it for you, I’d have to do it for Mrs. Gable, and she brings seven cats in a double stroller every Tuesday.”
A faint, almost imperceptible curve touched the corner of Matteo’s mouth. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it altered the harsh geometry of his face enough to make Grace’s pulse perform a sudden, unexpected flutter.
“Mrs. Gable sounds formidable,” he said.
“She is. She once threatened to report me to the mayor because we didn’t have three copies of a book on prize-winning tulips.” Grace dusted a light layer of wood flour off the counter. “Your niece seems protective of her space.”
“Her parents died eleven months ago,” Matteo said flatly. The information was delivered without a plea for sympathy, presented as a hard, immovable fact. “A car accident on the Turnpike. She doesn’t like crowds. She doesn’t like noise. My sister... my sister used to read to her every night before bed.”
Grace stopped her dusting. The light humor vanished from her expression, replaced by a quiet, steady reverence that matched his tone. She looked toward the third aisle, where a small red sleeve was visible, pulling a heavy, dark-blue volume from the lower shelf.
“Loss makes the world feel very loud for a long time,” Grace said softly.
Matteo looked back at her, his dark eyes narrowing slightly, as if re-evaluating the woman standing behind the battered oak counter. “You speak from experience.”
“My father died when I was twelve,” Grace said simply. “For two years, I thought every loud noise was something falling apart. I spent most of my middle school years sitting in the corner of this exact library because the librarian, Miss Henderson, let me sit under her desk when the bell rang.”
Matteo didn’t offer a platitude. He didn’t say he was sorry. Instead, he reached into his overcoat pocket, pulled out an old, silver-plated pocket watch, checked the time, and set it on the wooden surface between them.
“Thirty minutes,” he said. “I’ll be sitting by the window.”
He walked away, his heavy leather shoes making no sound against the worn terrazzo floor. Grace watched him sit on one of the small, uncomfortable wooden chairs meant for parents, his long legs folded awkwardly, his dark eyes tracking the little girl in the red coat as she sat cross-legged on the floor with a book about giant squids resting across her knees.
That had been seven weeks ago.
Seven weeks of Saturdays that slowly bled into Tuesday afternoons and Thursday evenings. Matteo had returned, sometimes with Lucia, sometimes alone after the library had closed its doors to the general public, standing near the back shelves, returning heavy volumes on architecture, urban planning, and obscure regional histories. They had talked—about books, about the city, about the absurd bureaucracy of municipal funding—never touching upon his business, never touching upon the shadow that followed his last name across the city.
Until tonight.
Now, in the quiet, rain-streaked interior of the Hawthorne Neighborhood Library, Grace stood before him on her thirty-third birthday, staring down at the rectangular package wrapped in thick brown butcher paper and tied with a simple piece of jute twine.
“Open it,” Matteo said softly.
Grace reached out, her fingers brushing against the rough paper. Her heart was beating against her ribs like a trapped bird. She untied the twine, her hands slightly unsteady, and folded back the thick brown paper.
Inside lay a book.
It was an old cloth-bound edition, its hard cover dyed a deep, unfaded indigo, stamped with intricate silver foil lettering that caught the overhead light. The title read: A History of the Old Bridges of the Schuylkill Valley, 1894.
Grace gasped, a sharp, choked intake of air that sounded entirely too loud in the empty room. Her fingers hovered over the cloth cover, terrified that touching it might smudge the silver leaf.
May you like
“This...” she whispered, her voice cracking. “This was my grandfather’s.”
“I know,” Matteo said.
