“Her name is Rosanne,” I said, and my voice did not sound like mine. “Rosanne Castellano. She is the baby sister of Sal.” Mrs. Ybarra let out a breath. “I had hoped you would know her.” In 1987 Rosanne had taken eleven thousand dollars from the savings of my mother in law Concetta, to feed a blackjack habit in Elko, and Sal found out when the bank called about the overdraft. He drove to Elko himself, brought her home, and told her never to come back. Concetta forgave her. Sal never did. “She was my husband sister, Mrs. Ybarra. I have not seen her in thirty seven years. Why would she wear his jacket?”
Mrs. Ybarra turned over a second photo. The same woman, the same jacket, but this time at the Peppermill garage, handing a thick envelope through the window of a gray Lexus. The driver wore a Reno Aces cap and sunglasses at three in the morning. The plate was clear. I knew that plate. I had watched it back out of my driveway every Sunday for a year. “That is the car of Brett,” I whispered. Mrs. Ybarra nodded. “I called Detective Marcus Delgado at the Reno Police Department yesterday. He is waiting in the lobby, Mrs. Castellano, if you want to talk. You do not have to.” I took one breath and said, “I have typed testimony for thirty eight years. Let him in.”
Detective Delgado was a tall quiet man in his forties with a legal pad and a kind face. He explained it in plain English. Brett had run up eighty three thousand dollars in sports betting debts on three offshore apps, and a man in Sparks was calling him. He had found Rosanne last winter through a family tree website. She was sixty six, broke, living in a weekly motel on Fourth Street and still gambling. Brett paid her rent and offered her ten percent of everything she pulled out of my account, if she wore my husband jacket from the cedar chest, which he had taken from my house, and called the bank as me. He gave her the answers himself, pulled from the file of Sal.
A Reno widow learned that her estranged sister in law and her own son in law had drained her savings at casino machines, and she won every dollar back while mending her family.
Delgado also told me what Brett had planned next. A transfer form for the sale of my house, already half filled out, was in his briefcase when they searched his office. He had meant to finish me off in the spring, he told Rosanne, once the savings ran dry. I sat in the bank office with my hands folded and thought of Sal, and of how he would have driven to Elko again, this time for me.
I went home and did not tell Gina, because Delgado asked me to wait until Friday. It was the longest three days of my life. On Sunday, Brett came to dinner with yellow roses, as always, and kissed my cheek. I served the pot roast I have made for fifty one years. Gina barely touched her plate. Halfway through the salad, there was a knock on the front door and Detective Delgado stepped in with two uniformed officers and a warrant. Brett stood up so fast his chair fell over. “Teresa, this is a mistake,” he said. I looked at him the way I used to look at witnesses. “Brett, I have the transcript. Sit down.”
Gina did not scream. She put her fork down and said, very slowly, “I knew something was wrong.” Then she told us all of it. Brett had read her text messages for two years. He had taken her car keys the week Sal passed away. Twice he had told her that if she said anything to me, he would see to it that I lost the house to the debts of Sal. The late night calls she hung up on were Gina trying to warn me. She had not been able to make herself say the words. I held her at my own table while the officers took her husband out the door with his hands behind his back, and the yellow roses stayed on the counter.
Brett pleaded guilty in February to felony theft and identity fraud, and the judge in Washoe County gave him six years, plus full restitution. The bank was wonderful. Mrs. Ybarra personally approved a refund of the entire forty one thousand, two hundred dollars within a month, since I had been defrauded with forged authorizations. The state board took his CPA license before the sentencing hearing was even over. Rosanne turned herself in the same week and agreed to testify. She got eighteen months of probation, because of her cooperation and her sixty six years, and because of one thing I did before the hearing that I did not expect to do.
I went to see her. She was sitting in the stairwell of the courthouse, small and gray, in a cardigan three sizes too big. She looked up at me and said, “Teresa, I took the jacket because it smelled like him. I was ashamed every single time I wore it.” I sat down beside her on the cold steps. “Rosanne, Sal made me promise to never let you into the house. He did not make me promise to never forgive you.” She put her face in her hands. I took her to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting at the Methodist church that evening, and I have driven her every Thursday since. She is eleven months clean.
Gina and her little dog moved into my spare bedroom in March, and she is working at the school district again, eating three meals a day and sleeping through the night. She laughs again, a great loud Castellano laugh. We took the money from the bank and set up a scholarship in the name of Sal at Reno High, for wrestlers who need a ride to state. Rosanne comes for Sunday dinner now with a pie she bakes herself. I gave her the wrestling jacket on her sixty seventh birthday. Standing under the lemon tree, I said to Sal that night, I kept the promise, you old goat. Just not the way you meant it.
I used to say that the house always wins. My father was right about the casinos, but he never saw my kitchen. Family took forty one thousand dollars from me, and family gave back more than I can count at that table.