I can’t stop looking in every corner. Hoping for a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. The books remain, some of them dog-eared and pages turned over, waiting for her to return and pick them up again. But my sister will not be coming back.
There will be no more singing. Only the haunting grief of my mother as she holds onto the parts of Nicci we were able to put together for burial.
Some of those parts I collected myself from the lawn of our family’s estate. My father couldn’t do it, couldn’t face seeing his daughter like that. He tried to drown himself in alcohol instead, tried to drown out the sound of my mother’s screams as Rosa tried to console her through her own tears and I sent the staff away, slowly making my way outside. I found the softest, silkiest blanket we had in the house, and I picked up the scattered parts of my little sister that the Corvos deigned to leave us.
For the most part, unrecognizable.
For the most part.
My stomach flips, threatening to bring up the coffee I managed to choke down this morning. The priest pauses as he walks past me, instead lowering his head and carrying on. The men stood beside the graveside, waiting to do their work, shift on their feet, casting uncomfortable glances towards the grieving woman unable to let go of her child.
My mouth moves at last, although the rest of me feels frozen. “Leave.”
They exchange glances, and one swallows. “Sir…,”
They have a job to do. I hold out my hand. “Give me a shovel, and leave.”
The one in charge hesitantly hands it over, the others following behind him as they leave us alone. Rosa looks at me desperately where she kneels next to Mama, her thick auburn hair sticking wetly to her forehead and shoulders, her make-up halfway across her face.
Across from them, my father’s gaze is vacant, even as he watches his wife. He can offer no comfort, and my motherwouldn’t accept it if he tried. My previously inseparable, loving parents have a jagged crack between them, full of blame and guilt that seems insurmountable.
Theydid this.
I shove the thoughts away. I will allow no part of them into this space, this final goodbye.
The shovel thuds to the ground as I take heavy steps towards my mother. Rosa is whispering to her, her hand stroking her back in shaking movements.
My hand squeezes her shoulder. “Into the car, Rosie. There are towels. I’ll bring Mama.”
Wiping at her face, I watch as my youngest – now my only, and the pain spikes at the thought – sister scrambles to her feet. Barely sixteen, but the last of her childhood has been ripped from her. She hugs her arms as she turns away, and I gently slide my arms under my mother.
She fights me, weak as a kitten as I lift her. I don’t think she’s eaten in days.
“Nicci,” she cries. Her hands batter my chest. “I won’t leave her here alone. Put me down.”
“Rosa needs you,” I rasp. “I’ll stay with Nicci, Mama. She won’t be alone.”
My mother slides into rambled mutterings as Rosa opens the car door and I place her inside. The driver already has the heating up, and I grab a towel from the stack I had put in this morning, wrapping it around her. Rosa sniffs, wiping at her face. My mother ignores her, pressing her face against the window.
“Take them home,” I order Santo. “Make sure my mother gets inside the house.”
Then I turn back to Rosa, my eyes skipping over my mother. “I won’t be too long.”
She nods, already lifting my mother’s freezing hands and rubbing them gently. “Don’t… don’t rush, Gio.”
They pull away, leaving me with my silent father and my dead sister.
His footsteps tread behind me as I pick up the soaking wet rope. He takes the other side, and together we lift Nicci into the dirt, lowering her gently, so fucking gently, down into the cold, packed earth.
She doesn’t belong here. The wrongness of it jars against my chest, a physical pain that I haven’t been able to shake in the days since I arrived home to my father’s call.
As the coffin touches the bottom, the rope slacking in our hands, my father drops to his knees as though he’s a puppet, his strings slashed. He buries his face in his hands as I move around him, picking up the shovel.
It shakes in my hands, but my grip is firm as I press my foot into the sharp edges and push down, filling it with soil that thumps wetly over the final resting place of Nicoletta Fusco.
A daughter.
A sister.
