The Wooden Box
That night, I barely slept.
At 2:11 a.m., I got out of bed and pulled the old wooden box from the top shelf of my closet.
Mr. Cosenza had given it to me three days before he died.
No great ceremony. He was lying in a hospital bed complaining that the pudding tasted like wallpaper paste.
“You’re taking that box.”
“I don’t want your junk.”
“It’s excellent junk.”
“What is it?”
“Things nobody else wants.”
“Then why would I?”
“Because you ask questions.”
At the time, I hadn’t opened everything.
Some photographs. Immigration papers. Recipes. Letters in Italian. A few in Sicilian.
One sealed envelope.
I had never read it because Nicola had written across the front:
FOR LUCIA’S FAMILY — ONLY IF THEY COME LOOKING.
At 2:16 a.m., sitting cross-legged on my apartment floor, I finally understood.
The Rossis.
My hands shook as I opened the wooden box.
I took out the envelope.
Did not open it.
Not yet.
Underneath was an old photograph.
Nicola at perhaps twenty-five.
Salvatore beside him.
And between them stood a beautiful young woman with dark hair, smiling as if she had just laughed.
Lucia.
On the back Nicola had written:
Before fear made all three of us stupid.
I almost laughed.
Then I found something else.
A hospital bracelet.
LUCIA ROSSI.
Twenty-one years old.
And beneath it, a folded birth certificate.
I stared at the document.
Lucia Rossi. Mother.
Nicola Cosenza. Father.
A baby girl. Born three months before Lucia died.
I read the child’s name twice.
Then a third time.
Because I knew that name.
Claire Marie Cosenza.
My mother.
The room seemed to disappear.
My mother was Claire.
Claire Marie.
She had always told me her parents died when she was an infant and she was raised by relatives. She had never known more.
At least that was what she claimed.
I looked down at Lucia’s photograph. Then toward the mirror across my apartment.
Dark hair. Same chin. Same eyes?
I didn’t know.
My breathing changed.
Nicola Cosenza had not simply been my elderly neighbor.
He had been my grandfather.
And Salvatore Rossi’s dead sister—was my grandmother.
May you like
Which meant the man half of New York feared had spent three months watching his grandniece serve his son steak and coffee without knowing who she was.
And Mr. Cosenza had known exactly what would happen if we ever met.
