Page 112 of Mafiosa
The door creaked open, and a little girl peeked her head around it. She had wide grey eyes and thick black hair that hung in ringlets around her face. She smiled at me. Her front teeth were missing. I tried not to be knocked off-kilter by the appearance of an objectively adorable little girl, but somewhere in my mind, I was thinking,Is this my father’s love child? And if it is, who or what am I going to punch?
‘Hallo,’ said the little girl. She didn’t open the door any further, so I couldn’t see behind her.
‘Hello there.’ I smiled, but it was twitchy. She didn’t look remotely like me, but I had been tricked out of a family before. ‘What’s your name?’
She blinked her big eyes. There was something so familiar about them. God. I could almost feel it coming like a freight train. ‘Emilia.’
Emilia. Those eyes… that grin.
‘Where’s your mother, Emilia? Is she here with you?’
Emilia bit her bottom lip and made herself look very guilty. ‘She’s in the bathroom. I’m not supposed to answer the door, but I saw you in the window.’ She gestured to the side window, where a lace curtain had been pulled away behind a potted plant. ‘And I liked your hair, so I thought it would be OK. It’s like the sun.’
She reached up to touch it, but a voice startled her back into the house. ‘Emilia! What have I told you about answeringthe door? Come inside now.’
Emilia melted back into the house, and a heartbeat later, the front door swung open and I was standing face-to-face with Evelina Falcone.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINEMARLA FLORES
I grabbed the side of the wooden awning and tried not to pass out.
I was staring so hard my eyes were vibrating. I had seen her photo a million times atEvelina– the one of her beaming on her wedding day, her head resting against Felice’s. I had memorized her oil painting, felt her gaze on the back of my neck every time I went to the library. I had traced the sadness in her eyes a thousand times, and felt it reflected inside me.
She looked the same – just a few more lines around her eyes, a tightness to her mouth.
She was beautiful.
She wasalive.
I wanted to reach out and touch her to be sure.
Evelina stood motionless, letting me take it all in.
That’s how I knew she had been expecting me.
I rubbed the shock from my chest. ‘You’re alive,’ I said, coming a little closer, as though she was an apparition. ‘You’re supposed to be dead. My—’ I froze and felt the colour run from my face. My father was supposed to have killed her. But he hadn’t killed her. He hadn’t touched a hair on her head. And if she owed us a favour, that meant he had helped her.
‘You’re really alive.’ And the relief was like ice in my bloodstream. My heart expanded, just a little. My father wasn’t a monster. He wasn’t irredeemable. He wasn’t a stranger, after all.
And someone special, someone who had deserved to live, was still living. ‘You’re Evelina Falcone.’
She sprung into life, hushing me with her hands. ‘I haven’t been Evelina since before my daughter was born,’ she whispered. She ushered me inside, and I went willingly, as though tied to a string. I had a million questions and more.
The hallway was brightly lit, and Emilia was jumping down it with a blue skipping rope.
Those big grey eyes.
Felice’s eyes.
Felice’s daughter.
Alive and well.
Unlike him.
Evelina led me into an airy kitchen with bright green cupboards. ‘Lemonade? You must be thirsty after your journey.’ She didn’t wait for me to answer. She busied herself at the fridge, keeping her back to me. Her hands were shaking, just a little. Strands of hair were wisping out of her long darkbraid. ‘Your father said you would come soon,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘He was here with us before… until Christmas Eve, that is…’ She trailed off, her voice dipping.
Ah.
