Page 19 of Bitter Poetry
CARMELA
Ettore sits in the front and talks to the driver. Jessica shares the back seat with me, holding my hand the entire journey.
My heart clenches as we pull into the cemetery where the service will take place. My eyes scan the crowd already gathered, spotting my father in his wheelchair with Dante at his side.
Just seeing his presence beside my father eases some of the tension between my shoulder blades.
We pull to a stop.
My sister is out like a shot before the driver has a chance to open her door.
“Jessica!” I hiss, but she is already making a beeline for our father.
Ettore opens the door for me. He holds out his hand to help me out. I don’t want to give it to him, but I also don’t want to appear rude and so I accept the offer.
When I go to take my hand back, his grip tightens slightly. “Please. Allow me.”
I don’t want to be escorted. I want to dash over there like my sister just did. But I’ll be eighteen very soon and need to compose myself, as my mother would have expected.
I force myself to relax when he draws my hand over his arm, aware of the quietness in the gathered crowd, of all eyes turningmy way, of the softening in my father’s face, of the tightening in Dante’s jaw, of the blind rage burning in my sister’s eyes as they land on us.
It’s a relief when I reach my father’s side where I can withdraw from Ettore’s touch and take my father’s hand instead.
Only now do I realize the stranger I’d previously dismissed standing at Dante’s side is his younger brother, Christian. There is no cocky smile for once. He seems serious. Older. He’s almost as tall as Dante, his hair a shade lighter but with the same whiskey-brown eyes. His face is softer than Dante’s, and his lips a little fuller, but the resemblance is striking otherwise. He doesn’t look like the boy I remember. The one who stepped in when I was in trouble and left blood splatter over my peach silk dress.
It wasn’t my blood or his.
He doesn’t offer his condolences. He doesn’t say a word. No, he stares at me like he knows I’m thinking about that day when he saw me vulnerable. Maybe it’s the formal suit, the setting, my sister’s comments about him getting kicked out of school for assaulting a teacher, or simply my present state of mind, but his presence—and the changes I see in him—really throw me.
Ettore moves over to speak to Dante, and I drag my gaze back to my father.
“How are you girls doing?” Papa asks. “I’ve missed you.”
“We’ve missed you too,” I say. “Please say you’ll be home soon.”
He pats my hand. “Yes, hopefully soon.”
His words sound false. The kind of words you give to someone you care about when you know the truth will hurt.
The service is beautiful.
I start crying, and I don’t stop until we leave for the wake where people I barely know come over and tell me how sorrythey are, how wonderful my mother was, and how she will be missed.
I’m aware of Dante on the periphery, of the strain on my father’s face, and my sister’s tears.
And how Ettore is always nearby.
It’s only later, after we are leaving, that I realize he never gave the envelope, and whatever was so important in it, to my father.
CHAPTER 8
DANTE
It’s late. The view from my apartment across downtown Chicago is the subject of my brooding stare.
The whiskey isn’t cutting it.
“It wasn’t the Russians,” Christian says from behind me where he is lounging on the couch. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
