On the train I told him about the day we thought he’d drowned and how I was determined to ask my father to round up as many fishermen as he could to go look for him, and when they found him, to light a pyre on our shore, while I grabbed Mafalda’s knife from the kitchen and ripped out his heart, because that heart and his shirt were all I’d ever have to show for my life. A heart and a shirt. His heart wrapped in a damp shirt—like Anchise’s fish.

