They all had been at a loss for words. After Amos and Alanah had told Jim about their harrowing escape Jim had made a few calls. He had walked a few blocks to the nearest payphone to do so and called a seldom used contact at the Police department to find out what the fuss was about over in Charlestown.

  “How’d you hear about this Jim and why do ya care?”

  “I can’t say but I need to know what happened and why and if anyone got hurt”.

  “It was a couple a kids from the North side. Far as we can tell they were tryin to pull off a car jacking but it doesn’t make much sense from the eye witnesses that were willing to talk to us. Apparently the car got away but there were shots fired and one of the kids was bloodied up a bit.”

  Jim listened without any comment, gripping the worn old receiver tight to his ear as his contact went on. “It doesn’t make much sense, whole thing seems off but these days who knows. I don’t know what else to tell ya.”

  “What seems off to you, what doesn’t sound right?”

  “Well…later on word is that the older kid was aimin’ to collect a bounty on the people in the car and was tryin’ to kill them to get it but they got away. Just one of the blood feuds that managed to spill outta the North end I guess.”

  A minute later a dejected looking Jim hung up the phone and trudged back to his shop while wondering just where this was going to end. While he had been away Alanah and Amos had starting arguing and when Jim unlocked the front door he stepped right into a heated back and forth between the two”

  “Maybe I don’t want to go sit and rot on a farm right now. Maybe I have other options. Did you ever think of that?” Alanah was red faced and her eyes were flashing. Amos looked confused and unsure of what to say to this.”

  “Hold on, hold on” Jim held up his arms while turning to the kids after locking the door. “Don’t you two turn on each other now, you’ve hit a real rough patch lately but if you start fighting now, its just gonna get worse. Apparently that bunch in the North end has a bounty out for the both of ya. We’ve got to figure where you can lay low, Amos is right, the farm would be a great spot for you Alanah.”

  Alanah glowered at Jim but did not say anything so the older man went on. “Amos can stay with me, this place is not set up for a young girl to bunk here anyways. Besides, I know you like it out there and Simon, Andi and I daresay Randy, they really like your company Alanah.”

  Jim paused, he knew he was not making the right argument with Alanah and he tried hard to think of what might resonate with this young girl.

  “We’re not askin’ you to hide or give up. We juts need to figure out a next move. If Amos is staying here then he stays inside and under my watch. Out at the farm at least you’ve got fresh air, horses and things to do. I’m going to put Amos to work here doing a long overdue deep clean.”

  Later on Jim thought It was probably the mention of cleaning that pushed Alanah over the edge but he was wrong. Alanah had decided at the last moment that this was not the time to turn to Will and the relative safety of Newburyport.

  She had exchanged a few emails with Will and even though he still begged her to return and he had promised repeatedly to help her, she still felt uneasy about the idea. She wanted to see him again in person to be sure before deciding to make that kind of change in her life.

  Now was not the time she realized, and the farm would be a better bet and probably there would be less cleaning to do there as well.

  They shared a mostly silent, desultory meal together and turned in early for the evening. Alanah took the couch, and Amos took a sleeping bag on a camping cot. There were lots of those to choose from so all in all it wasn’t a terrible night and at least they were not tied up in front of Giorgio and his friends in the North End.

  The next morning they climbed into Jim’s truck and after convincing Jim that there would have been no way for their would be kidnappers to know where their hideout was they stopped off briefly for Alanah and Amos to get some things.

  Amos scaled the gas pipe and crossed the roof up to their home with a sense of dread. After getting what they needed he took stock of what they were leaving behind and his apprehension turned into feelings of anger and despair. Two steps forwards, one step backwards. Something his father would say when things were not going well and he was getting frustrated.

  Maybe so Amos thought but at this moment he felt like the step backwards hadn’t stopped yet and if he wasn’t careful, he would end up unmoving and flat on his back. Solve the first problem ….how does one do that Amos wondered to himself as they walked back across the roof.

  How do you deal with an unknown number of complete strangers looking to either capture or kill you? I guess you hide, what else can you do?

  Alexia stared out at the country road in front of her windshield. Never once had her mother ever taken her to a place like this. Almost her entire life had revolved around the old Italian streets and haunts of the North End. One summer, long ago her mom had taken them back to the old country for a month long trip but it had been awful.

  They went to none of the beaches or tourist sites, just one old church after another and plenty of visiting with many different groups of scheming, suspicious old crones. Alessia was shocked that there were so many of these women, just like her mother in the old country. She had resolved never to return if she could help it.

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  Out here in the countryside, it was lush and beautiful, so quiet and peaceful except for her mother’s constant fidgeting. Alessia glanced over at Nonna Conti. Now that they had been parked for a while she had removed from her massive old handbag an old terracotta bottle, tightly wrapped with a faded ribbon over a cork stopper sealed with wax.

  The old woman was gently caressing the side of the bottle with a wrinkled hand, holding it protectively as one might do with a newborn. Alessia suppressed a shudder. This was her mother’s prized possession, a curse so powerful, so effective she had threatened many with it but in the end, she had never used it.

  Alessia knew her mother well enough to know that she was reluctant to use this curse as she might not likely ever come across another one like this again. As she had gotten older she was certain that this curse had been purchased during her childhood trip to Italy. Her mother had never threatened anyone with such a curse before that trip and then in the decades since, she had threatened many with it.

  Nonna Conti might have waited too long and Alessia had wondered if she would ever be able to use the curse. This young boy had surfaced at the perfect time. He and his friend had managed to enrage and shame the Famigli to such an extent that they were publicly begging for information and offering a reward for their capture.

  To make matters worse, the boy had outwitted and beaten her Grandson Silvio. This, this was the true reason they were now sitting and waiting out here in the countryside for a chance to strike. Alessia knew her mother cared a lot less about the Famigli than she let on and that she would never use a curse just for their benefit alone.

  This was the type of target her mother had been waiting for. Someone that she had now a personal faida di sangue against. The type of target that, once cursed, would make her mother even more feared and respected until her death and well beyond.

  The rasping sound of her mother’s hand on the coarse surface of the bottle was starting to get to Alessia but she could not say anything. No one could criticize or question the old lady. Only a fool or someone who didn’t know her would try it and probably only just once.

  Nonna Conti had gotten a neighbour’s son to look up the farm and then find her map images of the area. She had committed the map to memory and she knew every road and turn to take from her home in the North end to this dusty road where she laid in wait.

  She even had a sense of where to hide the car, just up on a grassy lane that passed through a stand of trees and then led onto a neighbouring field.

  This is where they were parked, almost completely hidden but with a decent view of the country lane and a better view of the short driveway that led to the farm.

  The inside of her old Mercedes was becoming stifling hot in the late June sunshine. She had briefly opened a window only to be berated by her mother about flies, bees, wasps and other imagined horrors getting in the car. So she sat, breathing slowly and waiting with her mother, watching the road for their victim.

  They saw the dust plume before they saw the truck. It didn’t matter, some sixth sense, a primal instinct for prey had awakened in the old woman and she sat upright while still carefully holding her bottle. “It’s them, I know it, it is them. Alessia, use the binocolo”

  Alessia, sensing an opportunity, rolled down her window and lifted the binoculars up to her face and out of the window as she turned towards the farm. The cool, sweet air washed over her and briefly expunged the smell of dust and old sweat that enveloped her mother and all around her.

  “What do you see, what do you see? The old woman was excited and apprehensive, it had been years since Alessia had seen her mother this animated. “It’s an old truck; it’s not a Toyota Corolla” she said while following the progress of the dust plume as it chased at the heels of the truck.

  “It’s going slow enough, this is the one, I can feel it.”

  “Hang on mama, I can’t tell, everyone drives slow out here on these dirt roads…wait…hang on..ok you might right, they have turned into the farm.”

  “Watch them, tell me who gets out, who is in that truck.”

  Alessia watched as the truck came to a stop in front of the weathered two story farmhouse and the dust eddied and swirled in diminishing clouds that soon spread out to coat everything nearby until the next rain.

  On older man with graying hair got out somewhat stiffly and then in mid-stretch gave a friendly wave to the pair that had just exited the front door of the farmhouse to see who had arrived.

  “I don’t car about him, who else is in the truck?”

  “Just wait Mama, here comes someone from the other side of the truck, it is boy and wait, here comes the girl…”

  “I knew it, I knew this was them and that they would come here, I could feel it.”

  Alessia watched intently with her binoculars, slowly giving every important detail to her mother. After so many, many late nights of relaying of describing in painstaking detail what had happened that evening in the bar, Alessia knew exactly what was important to the old woman.

  She also knew better than to hold back anything or omit anything relevant. Her mom could pick up on the slightest hesitation and then she would interrogate Alessia again and again until she was sure she had heard it all.

  “ok, just the girl has taken out a bag from the back, she has hugged the older man and she seems a bit angry with the boy but wait, no, she must have been joking, now she is giving him a long hug.”

  “Watch what comes next, don’t miss anything” Nonna Conti warned.

  “ok….wait mama…ok, they are done talking now and girl has just waved goodbye and she has gone inside with the older couple that came out the house. Now the older man and the boy are getting back in the truck and it looks like they’re turning around and coming back out.”

  “Get ready Alessia, get ready. Turn the car on, we are going to follow them back to the City.”

  The younger woman sighed to herself and began rolling up the window. It had been so nice to site with the warm, damp richness of the new summer landscape permeating the air. The drive back to Boston with the windows closed would once again entomb her with the dusty sour smell of the old woman and Alessia hoped that she could make it without getting sick to her stomach.

  “Won’t they see us behind them Mama if we try to follow?”

  “No, not with this dust in the air and I feel in my bones that this curse wants to be cast. It will help protect us from being seen. They might see us but as soon as they look away they will forget.”

  “How can a curse do such a thing mama, how do you feel a curse?”

  The old woman turned quickly in anger at her daughter. “Don’t you dare ask such stupid questions. You have never cast a curse and you never will. You have no idea that it feels like when you get close.”

  She looked down reverently, almost lovingly at the worn terracotta jar she clutched in her hands.

  “It was good to wait, we were right to wait and soon they will see what we can do. Soon they will all know better”.

  Alessia turned onto the dusty road after the truck. She stared straight ahead and drove as carefully as she could. She had no idea if her mother was talking to her or to the old terracotta jar and that uncertainty made her very uneasy.

  Silently, under her breath, she once again abused her husband Carlo’s lack of love and courage for leaving her behind with this horrible woman and as she did her heart ached with a faint hope that he one day still, he may come back for her.

  Her rational mind knew better however, and she had accepted long ago that her husband was likely never to return and that her mother was almost certainly to blame.