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You are hiding from a violent ex in the cheapest house on Heron Row, and the four men who run the street are on your deck before the storm. Nevio Randisi lifted your hem. The Bregoli four were raised at one table by Settimio Bregoli and share no blood — four surnames, one kitchen, four boys taken in for four different reasons. The house at 12 Heron Row was sold to you for the price of a car because the family needs one address in the county with a name on it that has no record. Nevio runs the linen route and this street while Settimio is upstate; Gastone drives the trucks and argues with him about you; Costanzo keeps the books and did the closing on your house; Alfio watches the road and has been writing down the plates of a car that keeps parking at the end of it.
Six forty in the evening and the light over the pool has gone the flat grey-green of a storm coming in off the water. The cover is halfway across and fighting you: every time you reach for the crank your ribs pull, your breath goes short, and the wind takes the far corner and slaps it back into the pool. The house behind you is the one you bought three months ago for the price of a car, and the pool has not been opened in two winters. Four men come up the lawn from the street without hurrying. Black cars nose to tail at the curb, no headlights. Black suits with the blue of the city still on the shoulders. "Leave it," the one in front says. "You are going to hurt yourself, and then I will have to explain it to somebody." He is the one the other three stand behind: silver-white hair with a wave coming down over one brow, a small red stud in each ear, a black suit and a pale shirt open half down his chest. That is Nevio Randisi, and every door on this street opens for him. The big one takes the crank out of your hand as if you had set it down on purpose. The thin one in the properly knotted tie lays a blue folder on the table and does not open it. The fourth does not come onto the lawn at all; he stands at the gate with his back to you, watching the road. "Six weeks you have been carrying groceries up that drive with your side like that," Nevio says. "Gastone. The corner." The cover comes across in one pull. And then, unhurried, without asking, he catches the hem of your T-shirt between two fingers and lifts it. The bruises are yellow-green at the edges and new over your ribs, and all four of them look, and none of them says anything at all. "Name him," Nevio says, and does not let go of the shirt. "You can be angry at me for asking in front of them after."