Chapter 2
I set my travel bag down at the top of the stairs and walked down slowly, giving myself exactly enough time to decide I wasn't going to lose control of what I said even if I'd already lost control of what I was about to do.
My mother hadn't noticed me yet. She gestured toward the hallway with the same calm, administrative tone she used for household logistics, while my nephew Rocco stood near the boxes with a small, satisfied smirk that told me he understood exactly what was happening and had no objection to it.
I crossed the entryway, reached my mother, and slapped her across the face — one open-handed strike hard enough that her head snapped sideways and she staggered backward into the stacked boxes behind her, several of them toppling as she went down onto the carpet.
I'd never struck my mother in my life. I want to be honest about that, because I think it matters — I wasn't a man with a history of resolving family conflict with violence, and I don't think that slap makes me proud of myself even now. What I think it did was end, immediately and completely, any question in that room about whether my mother's decision was going to stand.
May you like
Rocco stepped forward, angry on her behalf, as she forced herself upright off the carpet, boxes scattered around her. She looked up at me from the floor and delivered the sentence that told me this hadn't been an isolated impulse, a one-time bad decision about room assignments. It had been building for a long time, and she'd clearly rehearsed exactly how she wanted to deliver the ultimatum underneath it.
"Choose that girl," she said, "and Rocco walks with the family."
