Page 1 of Luca

Chapter one

Luca

Eighteen Years Old

“Dad, I’m home,” I call out, walking into the quiet house. Usually around this time, the old man is standing at the stove cooking a huge dinner and the smell of whatever he’s frying up permeates the air, but not tonight. My dad likes to tell me he’s going to start working overtime just to pay the grocery bill that’s doubled since I turned fifteen. But it’s not like it’s my fault that sophomore year I hit a growth spurt and the football coach took notice of my size and asked me to try out. Two-a-days take it out of me, and when I get home, I’m hungry enough to eat a horse.

“Old man,” I call again. “You home?”

We live in a small neighborhood on the Central coast in California. Apparently my dad is from Boston, but he’s never taken me back there to visit family. Said without my mom, there was no reason for us to visit the East Coast. She didn’t have any living relatives and he didn’t have any ties there. Not that it ever mattered much to me. I’m perfectly happy staying on the warmer coast.

Walking into the living room, I see my father sitting on our old plaid couch with a weathered box in front of him and photographs scattered all over the oval coffee table. I’ve seen the box before but never its contents. It’s one he’s kept hidden in the back of his closet. One day, when I was about twelve or thirteen, I went into my dad’s closet to look for a shirt for picture day. I was already growing like a weed and didn’t have a nice shirt that fit, so Dad told me to grab one of his, then gave me a hard time about having to go clothes shopping again. The box was hidden in the corner, and just as I was about to open it—I was a curious little brat—he came in and saw what I was doing.

“Son, there are things in a man’s life he’d prefer to keep private,” he told me. “I’d like to think I raised you to respect that.”

I never tried to look in the box after that, assuming whatever was inside was something he didn’t want to discuss. He was right, he did raise me to respect personal boundaries. Seeing it lying out in our living room all these years later is a little startling, to say the least, especially with the open bottle of whiskey sitting next to him.

“Little early in the day to be hitting the bottle, Pops.”

My dad looks up at me as though he’s just now realized he isn’t alone. Frank Bennetti is many things, but a man who is drunk before six p.m. on a work night is not one of them.

He doesn’t say anything about my appearance, doesn’t smile, doesn’t do anything but stare at me.

“What’s going on, Dad?”

His silence is unnerving. In fact, his entire demeanor has alarm bells ringing in my head.

“Sit down, Luca,” he says, pointing to the dark-brown recliner across from him.

That’s the last thing I want to do. His tone and the devastated look in his eyes have me wanting to run the opposite direction and not face whatever he’s about to tell me because I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’s going to drastically change my life. It’s not a feeling I’m familiar with; more like an instinctual part of a person’s mind. I’m scared, but I also know this isn’t going to be something I can hide from, whatever this is.

So, I sit.

My father holds out an old picture of my mother. We don’t have many. Actually, this is the only one. When I asked why we didn’t have any more photos of her, he said it was because when she died suddenly in a car accident, he lost his mind for a minute and burned them all. He told me it was one of his biggest regrets because I deserved to have photos of her. I never held it against him, though. I’d never lost the one person I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with and had a baby to care for all alone, so who the hell was I to judge?

“Ciara was beautiful,” he says as I hold the yellowing photograph between my shaking fingers.

I nod and glance at the picture of the woman who shares the same blue eyes with me, then back to him. “She was. What’s all this about?”

Other photos are strewn about the low table. All of them are filled with faces I don’t recognize. They’re old and obviously from when he was younger. Dad’s in a few, and I pick one up. My dad and the other two men in the photo are wearing suits. One holds a cigar in his hand, and his head is tipped back in laughter. I recognize my father standing to the right of him, his hand clasped on the man’s shoulder, a wide smile stretching across his face. The other man is laughing with my dad and the stranger in the picture. They all look comfortable together, as though they’ve known each other for years.

“Old friends of yours?” I ask.

“You could say that. They were part of the life I lived before you. Before I left Boston.”

“Before Mom died?”

He blows out a long breath. “I went to the doctor last week. I haven’t been feeling well. Short of breath, tired, had a couple dizzy spells.”

I nod as I think about the last few months. Sure, he’s been a little more tired than normal lately, but the man isn’t getting any younger.

“He called me today to go over some test results.” He’s holding my stare with anxious eyes.

Fear drops to the pit of my stomach.

“There’s no easy way to say this. Fuck, I wish there was.”

His eyes squeeze shut and when he opens them, the pain behind his dark-brown gaze tells me what he’s so afraid to say—what I’m terrified to hear. “My heart is giving out, son. The doctor explained I’ve had what’s called a silent heart attack. Probably more than one. With my age, he said a heart transplant is unlikely, and that’s about all they can do in cases like this.”

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