You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed, as Alyssia stared from one man to the other, herjaw sagging slightly with shock. For a brief moment, she wondered if she’d misheard him, or if he was winding her up, but he wasn’t.
“You’re joking, right?” she stuttered. “You can’t be serious ? ”
“Unfortunately, he is,” Antonio interrupted her glumly. “My aunt and my father slept together when she was sixteen.”
“OK, but that doesn’t mean anything, right?” Alyssia’s voice sounded almost as desperate as Antonio’s, her eyes silently pleading with him. “Tell me it’s not what I think it is, please ? ”
“I’m sorry,caro mio,” Antonio said, a sob choking his throat. His grip tightened ever so slightly on her hands, and she realised that he was shaking with repressed emotion.
“Maria is Antonio’s mother,” David said, pressing his lips together as he spoke. “I knew, obviously, but I never told him.”
A sob burst from Alyssia as she stared at Antonio, the magnitude of the lie beginning to dawn on her. She’d always been close to Antonio’s mother, and they’d spent many afternoons together learning how to make each other’s native cuisine, often accompanied by severalglasses of Italian wine. Even when his mother had been on her deathbed, she’d asked for Alyssia to sit by her bedside, not her own son, almost as if Alyssia were the daughter she’d never had.
“You can’t be serious.” she breathed, her eyes desperately begging her husband to say it was all one big joke. Antonio, however, had finally released her hands and was quietly sobbing, the heartbreak and deception stamped on his features. Suddenly his affairs seemed minute in comparison to the pain and anger he must be feeling.
The thought of Maria Blackwood being her mother-in-law was almost inconceivable, but she had to somehow wrap her head around it, however hard that might be. For all that she was finding it hard, though, it had to be doubly – or even triply – as hard for Antonio. Finding out that your aunt was really your mother was one thing, but realising that your own father had lied to you your whole life? It didn’t bear thinking about.
“So … what did she want?” she asked.
Antonio shook his head, staring at his coffee in misery. “She wanted us to tell everybody the truth, and she’s after half of Dad’s assets through the family link pathway.” He heaved a sigh. “I refused, obviously, because she’s not my mother. Not really. She might have been partof my life all this time, but she’s been Aunt Maria, not my mum.”
“Well, that’s up to you,” Alyssia shrugged. “I can’t force you one way or the other.”
“And that’s fair enough, but we have to dosomething!” his father interjected. “Even if we don’t admit the truth, what are we going to do about my assets? I can’t give her half of it,figlio mio!It would ruin me!”
“Why are your assets your primary concern?” his son roared, glaring at him with eyes like fire. “Never mind your stupid assets, youliedto me for thirty-six years! My mother went to hergravekeeping your secret, and you didn’t tell me because it was easier foryou? What aboutmyfeelings, Dad? Huh? Did you ever think about whatImight have wanted?”
“Of course I did!” David shouted. “You wereallI was thinking about, but I couldn’t tell you until my own father died, and then my brother went missing! I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you too!”
“It doesn’t matter, Dad!” tears streamed down Antonio’s face. “It doesn’t matterwhowas dead, you should have told me as soon as I turned eighteen! I was an adult then, and I had the right to know who my mother was!”
“And what would you have done if I’d told you, huh?” His father’s voice began to sound more and more Italian as his temper rose. “Would you have run off into the sunset with her? Called her ‘Mamma’, maybe? Imagine what your mother would have thought!”
“I guess we’ll never know now, will we?”
They glared at each other, both fired up with rage, until Antonio shook his head and stood up to fetch a glass of whiskey. The golden-brown liquor burned his throat on the way down, but the physical pain brought him back down from the emotional pain. He stood, staring out of the window for what felt like forever, and then turned back to face his father, who was staring at the table.
“Either way, you know the truth now.” Alyssia’s voice was gentle.
“And what a truth it is.” he snapped, curling his lip. “My aunt is my mother, my father didn’t have the decency to marry her when he found out she was pregnant, and instead married her off to his own brother, who conveniently happens to be missing! Oh, and on top of all that,Ididn’t find out until today because my dad was too scared of myNonnoto tell me, even though it’s beensix yearssince he died!”
“Well, when you put it like that ...” Alyssia admitted, before taking a deep breath. “Look, you can’t change what’s happened, but youcanchange the future. So, what are you going to do about her requests? Is there a deadline?”
“I don’t know. She’s given us until the New Year to decide.”
“Well, that’s a few months, at least. Hopefully I’ll have had this baby by then and I can be of more help.”
All of a sudden Antonio’s phone buzzed, making them all jump. He looked at the screen, his face twisting into a scowl.
“Ugh, it’s Janice.” he groaned. “Just what I needed.”
“Don’t answer it, then.” David snapped. “We have bigger things to attend to.”
“No, Dad,youhave bigger things to attend to. This isyourmess to deal with, not mine.” With that, he got up from the table and left the room, answering his phone with a cheer that he didn’t feel.
David and Alyssia were left in the kitchen, neither of them particularly keen on talking. David drank the rest of his coffee in silence, and then stared at the wall, tears slowly running down his face. The pain of holding onto thesecret might have gone, but it had been all too swiftly replaced by a deeper pain – the pain of betraying his son.
“Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?” he whispered. Alyssia shrugged, not knowing what to say in response.
