Page 79 of Angel
He tried to hide his surprise, but his eyebrows flew up a little bit. “Of what?”
I sighed. “Of the first Christmas after my parents died… The first year that Sophia and I lived with our aunt.”
Angelo put a hand on my shoulder. “And?”
“And it sucked,” I bitterly said.
“Was this one you repressed?”
I nodded. “I think so.”
“Hey,” he softly said.
I turned to face him. “She didn’t know how to deal with us. I had all my stuff going on, was probably a wreck. Sophia was…what some people would call a problem. She stayed out late, came home drunk… got into any kind of trouble I think a teenage girl can. Other than getting pregnant. She escaped that one.” I smiled slightly to lighten the mood, but Angelo didn’t buy it.
“What was Christmas like?”
“It wasn’t,” I simply said. “We didn’t celebrate it. We didn’t even get a tree.”
“That’s awful.”
I shook my head and looked at the floor. “Our aunt had her own fair share of issues. She was my mom’s sister. She didn’t even know about our parents’ involvement in the mafia until after they died. She just… I guess she knew how to deal about as much as I did.”
I looked back up just in time to see his eyes flash in anger. “Did she take out the pain of their deaths on you?”
I bit my lip. “No… but she shut down. Nothing cheerful happened in that apartment. Soph and I left the day we turned eighteen. After that, our aunt gradually stopped talking to us. It wasn’t her fault. She was just depressed. We reminded her of her sister. You could see it in her eyes, the way she seemed to relive getting the news.”
“You’re saying that because she couldn’t deal with losing her sister, she turned her back on her nieces?”
I shrugged. “Not everyone can handle tragedy the same way. Look at me. I shut it out, along with so many of my earlier memories. I don’t even know if that’s something I chose to do, or if my subconscious did it to keep me from fracturing even more.”
Angelo hugged me tight. I relaxed into his arms.
“She’s a fool,” he whispered. “And if you don’t want to go pick out a tree we don’t have to. You and I can stay here.”
“No, it’s fine.” I disengaged from his embrace and went for the door knob.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I stressed, my palm frozen on the knob. “I can handle it.”
Actually, I didn’t know that I could for sure.
But I needed to at least try.
The group went, piling into three cars and taking them to a Christmas tree stand nearby. The only trees left were small, thin ones and large, towering ones. Taking the biggest one available seemed to go without discussion. Perhaps it was a Salvatore thing.
The monolithic tree was too big to go on top of any one car, so Pops called a number to have it delivered and we went back home to wait for it to arrive.
I managed to breath evenly, and did not freak out.
At the house, we set about pulling boxes of ornaments and lights into the large living room. With the vaulted ceiling, the giant tree would be right at home.
“These are pretty,” I said, pulling out a string of white orbs.
“They’re from Italy,” Mrs. Salvatore proudly said.
The boxes seemed to go on and on, full of more decorations than any one tree, no matter how big, could possibly need. We pulled each piece out, though, and discussed the merits and disadvantages of them all. Mariel brought in some hot cider and Dominic lit a fire. The scene felt like something out of a movie.
