Never Love a Stranger [antikvár]

WHAT CAME BEFOREtMrs Cozzolina tasted the soup. It was rich and thick, toma-toey, and with just the right touch of garlic. She smacked her lips - it was good. With a sigh she turned back to the table where she had been stuffing ravioli with shredded chicken. It had been a long, hot June day but now it was beginning to grow damp. The sky outside had grown darker and she had had to turn on the light in the kitchen.'These American girls,' she was thinking as her pudgy fingers lightly shaped the dough and poked bits of chicken into them, the sweat damp on her forehead and just over her lips where the slight, dark shadow of a moustache was visible. 'Planning babies so they don't have to carry them in the summer! Who ever heard of such a thing? Why in the old country,' she smiled thinking of when she was young, 'they just had them. You didn't plan children there.' She had a right to think the American girls were foolish. She was a midwife and business had been bad all summer, and she had seven children of her own to feed since her husband had died.Somewhere in the darkness of the house the doorbell rang. She picked her head up at the sound and cocked it to one side as she tried to think who it might be. None of her customers were due until next month, and she came to the conclusion it was a peddler. 'Maria,' she shouted, her voice echoing through the dim hallways, 'go and see who's at the door.' Her voice was harsh from many years of shouting at her children and at the peddlers on the street from whom she bought most of her foodstuffs.There was no reply. Again the doorbell rang, this time it had a harsh, strident, demanding tone. Reluctantly she wiped her hands on her apron and went through the long narrow corridor to the front door. Through the coloured panes of glass in the window she could make out a dim shape. She opened the door.A girl was standing there, a small suitcase on the steps near her. Her face was thin and drawn but her eyes glowed with a warm, frightened luminosity, much like an animal's