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mother and father landed on Ellis Island in 1927 when they were just twenty-one years old. The trip was their honeymoon. They lived in the Lower East Side at the start, but got out of there real quick. Eventually, my father bought Rookhaven with his brother. Two families, five kids each, can you imagine? In that house?”
    “No kidding. Then what happened?”
    “Well, my father was killed in France in 1944.”
    “Oh, I’m so sorry,” I say quickly.
    “That’s okay, it was a long time ago.” Vic gives me his craggy grin. “His brother moved to Jersey. And my mother and her sister turned the place into a boarding house. We took in lodgers, mostly ex-servicemen.”
    “Wow.” I wonder who was in my room. It’s strange to think about decades—centuries, even—of people coming to New York to start their lives, just like we are. It’s like nothing ever changes, not really.
    We pause at Sackett Street and Vic gestures down another idyllic row of brownstones, pointing out where his cousins and friends lived.
    “And my first girlfriend lived there.” Vic points to a brownstone with high bay windows and rosebushes outside.
    “Beautiful roses,” I comment.
    “I gave her that rosebush as a present on our second date.”
    “Nice move! So, what happened? You broke up?”
    “I married her. She died.”
    I try to think of what to say, but can’t, so I just link my arm through his instead. His arm feels a lot stronger than it looks. He must have been a big guy when he was young.
    “And here we are!” he says a minute later. We’re outside a stone-covered restaurant with a sign reading BARTOLO’S in curly 1950s typeface.
    Manual labor, here I come.

 
    CHAPTER 4
     
    After three days of working in the restaurant, my back aches, my feet are blistered, my ears are ringing with children’s screams, and my hair smells like garlic.
    But I’m earning money.
    And that’s what I need to do to stay in New York, with my friends, and start my life. I don’t know what’s next, but right now, I need this job to survive.
    I’d never even have considered eating somewhere like Bartolo’s before. And guess what? I love it. The entire place was designed, fitted, and decorated by Vic’s brother and Vic a long time ago. As a result, the floor is uneven and worn, the plates and cups are all mismatched from sets bought long, long ago. There’s a bad hand-painted mural of Italian countryside on the back wall, and Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Perry Como play on a never-ending loop.
    But the restaurant has that same neighborhood warmth I noticed in Esposito’s. Customers don’t come here just because they’ve been told to by some ad campaign or because it’s the flavor of the month. They come here because they know the food is good and the welcome is warm.
    “Pia!” Angelo runs into the kitchen, where I’m gossiping with his cousins Ricky and Vinnie, the chefs. “Why the heck do I keep finding you in here? I need you on table three!”
    “Sorry!” I flash my best smile.
    “She was just helping us with the arugula salad.” Vinnie finds arugula salad hilarious; it’s the only new addition to the menu in the past decade. Meanwhile, apparently every other restaurant in Brooklyn is breeding organic hybrid lettuce in their backyard.
    Actually, they were telling me all about Jonah, the cute bartender (think cowboy meets surfer, extra blond, extra hot). Tonight’s our first shift together, and we’ve exchanged a few eye-meets, but I’m also detecting a little something between him and one of the other waitresses, Bianca (pinch-faced punk-hipster hybrid with a hot pink buzz cut on one side of her head and attitude to match—the kind of girl who just doesn’t like other girls). According to Vinnie, nothing’s ever happened between Bianca and Jonah. Ricky thinks she made a move last weekend and got rejected. (I swear to God, dudes are the worst gossips. I love it.)
    At table three, a very pretty young mom and dad are