“Before you say you’ll do it, you have to know what you’re agreeing to.” Her eyes are lighter with the sun shining onto her face, the warmest brown. Mahogany.
“Tell me. Then I’ll decide,” I say. It’s not as if anything she could say would make me change my mind.
I am reminded of a summer night on a rooftop with her sister last summer, when Vanessa Morelli proposed to me herself and explained the arrangement in no unclear terms: a loveless alliance, a business deal with rings. But Vanessa had been lovesick, shattering her own heart by asking me to marry her when she loved someone else. Marianna looks intense, almost nervous.
I could almost laugh that history is repeating itself with a different Morelli sister, one I fear I would never say no to.
“Vanessa is smart,” she starts. “She’s reasonable, good at parties, and personable. I am . . . well, my family says I can be a bit of a liability. I have a short temper sometimes, and I can be rude.”
I nod, imagining her sisters saying these things about her, likely out of love or gentle correction in social situations. Perhaps these suggestions are well-meaning, or jokes, but I see the weight Marianna carries from them, these so-called truths she thinks she’s learned about herself.
“I am violent, off-putting, and sometimes deeply unkind. By no means am I suitable to be a wife, and I’m especially not fit to be a mother.”
“Would you like some tea?” I ask, halting her string of self-assessment.
“I—yes, please,” she says with a breath, and follows directly behind me while I lead her to the kitchen where I click on the kettle. She continues like I hadn’t interrupted her. “People think I would be a bad parent, and I believe them. It’s not that I’m bad with kids, I’m just notmaternal, I think.”
I’ve never heard so many words strung together from her, this list growing longer for reasons she. . . what? She thinks these are enough to make me wish to deny her? If this is the case, I’m not as transparent as Sasha made me fear. Her short temper is the least of my concerns when she could commit heinous crimes in front of me, and I would look the other way—help her dispose of the bodies. They’d deserve it, she wouldn’t even have to convince me.
“You’re a good aunt, no?” I ask.
“That’s different.” She dismisses me with a wave. “I am emotionally distant, combative, and impulsive,” she lists off while leaning back against the granite counter.
I retrieve two mugs before mirroring her on the counter across from her.
“This is quite the list,” I say.
“Oh, there’s more.” She crosses her arms over her chest and looks up like she’s rehearsing the items to share. “I don’t sleep well, I’m overly confident, and I am somewhat destructive—but only because I believe that I reallycanget out of any bad situation with brute force and by being smarter than most people I meet.”
“Sound logic,” I remark. I don’t doubt that she is smarter than most people she meets, and not just because she hangs outwith gangsters. The kettle finishes boiling behind me, clicking off. “How do you take your tea?”
“I don’t know, like with honey or milk or something?” she says, and I take that to mean she’ll have it however I offer it. “I’m very good at protecting the people I care about, but—” Mary takes a deep breath, slows her speaking. I pour hot water over two black tea bags. “There are getting to be too many of them.”
My chest warms at her sincerity, the obvious concern in her eyes as she imagines each person she cares for. Her family is growing fast, first with Nate, now with the two new babies.
“Can they not protect themselves?” I ask as I spoon sugar into the cups. “I’ve seen your sisters fight, and your cousin is a force. Nate, too. He killed Cillian.”
“He shouldn’t have had to.” Mary sounds haunted as she speaks this. “And yes all the adults are perfectly capable, but if they keep fucking like rabbits, the kids are going to outnumber us.”
I try to withhold a smirk at her derision. I’ve seen her with those kids; she adores them, and they love her likewise. The two new children will be just the same, and all of the little Morellis and Donovanns that come after them.
“I must be clear that I asked you to marry me for one reason only: security,” she says.
I shouldn’t be as pleased as I am to hear that she thinks I can offer her security. It’s like a hindbrain response to knowing that she thinks I can provide for her. Caveman shit. I hand her the mug of tea, and she eyes it before taking a sip and flinching like she wasn’t expecting to burn her tongue on freshly boiled water.
“Christ, that’s sweet,” she says. I cross the kitchen to the fridge and retrieve a container of lemon slices.
“Vanessa told you that she couldn’t love you, but I think after enough years, she probably would have. You seem. . .” Marysquints at my face, and I don’t allow myself to wilt under her stare or look away. “Kind.”
I blink at this assessment, then squeeze a wedge of lemon into her mug.
“I will never love you, though. I have a limited number of spots in my heart, which are rapidly filling up. I need you to know that.”
I pass the mug back to her slowly, and she looks down at the wedge floating on the surface before taking another sip.
“And what of your own children? Would you have room for them?”
Marianna nods and holds up two fingers. “I can manage two. Any more and I’ll be stretched thin worrying about them. It’ll be best if I get my tubes tied after that, I think.”
