Page 26 of Ruthless Consequences

Like she had heard my internal thoughts, her eyes rose to meet mine. They fell back to the flowers a second later. Probably pissed at herself for acknowledging the fact that she was inside of my head.

You can always feel change. I knew it was coming the day I heard her voice in this house. I knew it was coming again. I could feel it. The twisting was making my chest feel too small for my body, and my heart too big. Growing pains.

Michele started to bring the bowls and plates out. Sebastiano was right behind him. Norah sat at the table, her eyes on a glass of water. A sad reflection stared back at her. Ma took it all in with wise eyes. If it wasn’t for her pact to make every day count, I knew the sadness would have been on the surface. She hid it well.

Our relationship—the one between her son and her husband—had always eaten at her slowly. I couldn’t help but wonder if this was our punishment. In this, we were eternally linked. He loved her and so did I.

That was why we put our differences aside for one day. We were losing her. The one thing that brought us together in peace.

We all took our seats. Plates and bowls were passed around. Something or the other had been forgotten in the rush. Norah grabbed it, setting it on the table, but she winced when she did. Sebastiano was too busy eating to notice. Light conversation followed. Plain conversation. Safe words. Pleasant ones.

“Where were you last night?” I said to Lucila as I took a drink and she took a bite of food.

She looked around the table, acting like I was talking to someone else, and she had no clue who.

“You,” I said, nodding to her, not letting her skirt around it.

The table became quiet, except for Minnie, who was singing to herself while she ate.

“That’s really none of your business,” Sebastiano said. “It stopped being your business when—”

Michele cleared his throat, successfully cutting him off. This wasn’t the time nor the place. I knew it. Everyone did. But I’d said it. It was out there. She knew this wasn’t over.

Dinner was mostly quiet after that. Only Ma and Minnie made conversation with me. After seconds (actual dinner), Ma asked me to do something she hadn’t in a while.

“Play the piano for me, Brio,” she said, barely having the strength to touch my arm. She looked at Lucila. “Will you sing?”

Lucila wanted to protest, but she couldn’t. She knew how much Ma enjoyed the sound of her voice. We all did.

I slid onto the bench. She hesitantly slid next to me. It wasn’t huge, but she put as much distance between us as she could. My fingers ran over the keys, and my arm brushed against her breast.

She sucked in a breath but released it quietly. Her eyes met mine, the cinnamon glistening in the light. But if tempers could change the color of eyes, hers would have turned red.

What the fuck was she thinking about, though? She’d been lost in thought all throughout dinner. I had purposely touched her, but it was like I’d touched a nerve. A memory that was close to the surface of her thoughts.

“Just play,” she said through clenched teeth.

I went to play the song Lucila had been singing the first time I’d ever heard her, but she shook her head.

“Not that one.”

“How ‘bout ‘Better Man,’” Sebastiano said, crossing his arms.

“Don’t know that one,” I said.

We could play this subtle cut for cut game for as long as he wanted.

Michele cleared his throat again, taking a seat on the sofa, next to Ma’s wheelchair. Unc had taken a seat on a chair, a glass of whiskey in his hand. He rarely said anything. He listened and he watched. He told me once he’d heard a million voices and more than a million issues in the span of his cabbie career. It turned him into a listener.

“What do you want to hear, Ma?” I said.

She smiled. “Ooh, lady’s choice. Okay. How about…‘Fast Car’?”

Lucila’s face turned somewhat pale, but she nodded. Her nerves were exposed to the room, but as my fingers started to entice the keys, she relaxed and gave the song what it deserved—her voice and everything it could never say in plain words.

I couldn’t stand to stop. I couldn’t stand for her to stop letting me in.

Instead of finishing, I went straight into the song Lucila had sung to me the first time. I went straight into the memories.

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