On the day my daughter turned one month old, my husband's beloved old flame swept into the estate cradling an unconscious infant against her chest. She struck her own face again and again, pleading with me between breaths. "If my own milk hadn't run dry, I swear on my blood I'd never have dared trouble you to nurse my child. I deserve to die for this. Please, I'm begging you, spare my baby. Don't poison her!"
In a fit of rage, my husband, Don of the Falcone Family, banished me to the exile-farm out in the forgotten hinterland, the slaughter compound where the disgraced are sent to "learn what real motherly love is." A month later he brought the whole bloodline out to collect me. When he saw me gently coaxing a newborn calf across the mud, he nodded, satisfied. "Looks like a month out here has finally put some real mothering in you."
I acted as if I hadn't heard him, lowering my head to kiss the big yellow cow's face. "What would you and our daughter like for dinner tonight?"
His jaw tightened. "I gave you a month out here to reflect, and this is how you repay me? Playing mad to sicken me?"
Just then the little calf stumbled into a muddy pit and began to cry. I rushed to scoop it into my arms and pressed a bottle to its mouth. "There, there, baby. Don't cry. Mommy's milk will make everything better."
……
When my husband, Lorenzo Falcone, came out to the compound with the whole Family in his shadow, I was on the pasture, walking a wobbly-legged calf that had been born only a short while before. The men fanned out behind him the way they always did, hands loose at their sides, eyes reading the tree line. "Camilla already forgave you for what you did to the baby," Lorenzo said. "She even told me to hurry and bring you home. Serafina, tell me. Did your time out here change you at all?"
Surrounded by the bloodline and their people, I looked at him with soft eyes, though my attention never left the calf stumbling beside me. "Slow down, little one. Don't hurt yourself."
Camilla smiled at me, gentle as a saint. "Serafina, Lorenzo has set the past aside to come for you himself. Don't hold your grudge against him any longer, or he'll call you proud again." Her tears sat perfectly in place, then vanished the instant Lorenzo's eyes drifted off her.
Lorenzo seemed to be in good humor, the faintest curve at his mouth. "Serafina's temper is as stubborn as ever, but a month on the exile-farm has put a deep sense of motherhood in her. My efforts weren't wasted."
I ignored their little performance and walked straight to the mouth of the cowshed, slipping off my shoes at the threshold. "Baby. Mommy's home."
Lorenzo's pupils constricted and he came in after me, eager. "Why did you leave our daughter with these animals in the shed? My precious girl, let your father see you."
They all stared at me as I cradled the calf against my chest and hummed low. "Rock-a-bye, rock-a-bye, down to Grandma's bridge we go..."
Lorenzo was angry and anxious at once, his chest rising hard. "Where is our daughter? Serafina, what madness is this? You're holding a calf."
The little thing startled and flinched. I held it tighter, my eyes fixed warily on Lorenzo. He looked disturbed under that gaze and turned to the keeper of the exile-farm, his face going dark. "I sent my wife here for a quiet month. How is it she's lost her mind entirely in that time?"
Nunzio Bramante wrung the filthy rag between his hands and ducked his head lower. "Don Falcone, on my life, I don't know what came over her. I set aside the best room on the compound for her and the child. She wouldn't have it. She insisted on moving into this shed."
Lorenzo frowned, thinking. Camilla clutched her chest at once, tears welling right on cue. "I understand now. Serafina still blames me in her heart. It's my fault for being a widow with no husband to lean on, leaning on Lorenzo instead and bringing him trouble. Lorenzo, you've been so good to me. Whatever Serafina does to me, I won't complain. If she hadn't harmed the child, I never would have spoken of it, and she'd never have been sent out here for a month's 'rest.'" Her voice broke on the word, and the moment his attention shifted, the break sealed over, dry and clean.
Those few words of hers lit Lorenzo's anger like a match to oil. "Serafina, I truly believed a month out here would put some remorse in you. I never imagined your nature ran so deep that you'd sink to something this low, working for my pity and making things impossible for Camilla."
