By the end of the first week, the house had learned new rules.

Guns disappeared beneath jackets. Men who had once strode through the kitchen now paused in the doorway and said, "Hey, Leo," and waited. Dante learned to crouch. It took him three tries and a good deal of grumbling about his knees, but he learned.

Leo still screamed. He still threw things. On Wednesday he dumped an entire bowl of spaghetti onto the floor and then lay facedown in it, sobbing, because the noodles were "too long."

But he slept. Five hours. Then six. Then seven.

Clara learned the house, too.

She learned that Rosa sang Neapolitan songs while she rolled pasta and stopped the instant anyone walked in. She learned that the third stair from the top creaked, and that Leo knew it, and that he jumped over it every single time like it was a crack in the sidewalk. She learned that Rico left the house at nine and came back at seven on the nights he'd promised, never a minute later, even if it meant ending phone calls mid-sentence.

She learned that the men on the front steps changed shifts at six, two, and ten, and that Dante never slept more than four hours.

She learned that nobody ever said Elena's name out loud.

And every night at two o'clock, when Leo cried out, Clara walked down the hallway and found Rico already sitting outside the door.

She stopped pretending it was a coincidence. So did he.

On the eighth night, Leo didn't settle.

His cries rose, sharpened, broke into the hiccuping gasps Clara knew too well. Rico was on his feet instantly, hand on the doorknob, frozen.

"If I go in—"

"Go in," Clara said.

"He'll scream."

"Then he'll scream at you instead of at the dark. That's better."

Rico opened the door.

Leo was sitting up in bed, tangled in his blanket, face wet. When he saw his father, he shrieked and pressed himself against the headboard.

Rico stopped in the middle of the room. Clara saw his hands lift—an instinct to grab, to fix—and then she saw him force them down.

He knelt instead. Right there on the rug, a few feet from the bed.

"I'm here," he said. "I'm not going to touch you."

Leo kept crying.

Rico looked back at Clara in the doorway, helpless.

"Breathe," she mouthed.

So he did. Slowly, deliberately, the way she had in the restaurant. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

It looked ridiculous. A grown man in a five-hundred-dollar shirt kneeling on a rug covered in cartoon dinoNextrs, breathing like a yoga instructor.

It worked.

Leo's gasps slowed. He wiped his nose on his pajama sleeve.

"I want warm," he whispered.

Rico looked at Clara again.

"Milk," she said. "Come on. Both of you."

---

The kitchen was dark except for the light over the stove.

Clara poured milk into a small Nextcepan. Leo sat on the counter—Rico had asked first, and Leo had nodded—wrapped in a blanket with only his face showing.

"Mommy did different," Leo said, watching the pan.

Clara turned. "Different how?"

He thought about it, frowning with the effort.

"Brown," he said. "Sprinkles brown."

Clara looked at Rico. He was staring at his son as if Leo had spoken in a foreign language.

"Cinnamon?" Clara guessed.

Leo looked uncertain.

Rico crossed to the spice cabinet. His hand hesitated over the jars, then pulled out a small one with a handwritten label. The handwriting was looping and feminine.

Cannella.

"She bought it from a shop in Bensonhurst," he said quietly. "She said the supermarket kind tasted like dust."

He opened the jar and held it out to Leo. "This?"

Leo leaned forward and sniffed.

His whole face changed.

"Yes," he breathed.

Clara stirred a pinch into the milk. Rico poured it into the small glass himself, tested it on his wrist the way he had seen her do, and handed it to his son with both hands.

Leo drank the whole thing.

Then he held the empty glass out to his father and said, "Again."

Rico laughed. It startled all three of them—a short, rough sound, as if it had escaped without permission.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Again tomorrow."

Leo accepted this. He leaned sideways until his head rested against Rico's arm.

Rico went very still.

Clara turned to rinse the Nextcepan so she wouldn't have to watch his face.

---

When Leo was asleep again, Rico didn't go back to the hallway.

He came down to the kitchen, where Clara was wiping the counter that didn't need wiping, and sat at the island.

"I didn't know about the cinnamon," he said.

"How could you?"

"I lived here." He turned the jar slowly between his fingers. "I lived in this house with her for five years, and I didn't know how she made my son's milk."

Clara set the towel down.

"Can I tell you something you won't like?"

"You've done nothing else since we met."

"Grief makes people collect everything they didn't know," she said. "My mom did it after my dad left. 'I never asked him why he liked the window seat. I never asked what he dreamed about.' She'd make lists. It didn't bring him back. It just made her feel worse."

Rico looked at her.

"So what do I do instead?"

"You learn the things that are still here," Clara said. "Leo likes cinnamon. Leo likes to be a burrito. Leo says 'boom' when trucks crash. He's still here. Learn him."

For a long moment, the only sound in the kitchen was the hum of the refrigerator.

"Elena would have liked you," Rico said finally.

Clara didn't know what to say to that.

He stood, set the cinnamon jar back in its place, and paused at the door.

"My mother is coming to dinner on Sunday," he said. "I should warn you."

"Warn me about what?"

Rico's mouth twisted into something that was almost, but not quite, a smile.

"Everything," he said.

---