“Yeah,” Alessandra said. “She’s just… the same. Do you think she’s ever going to get better?”
“She has to,” I said. “Lucia’s strong. She’ll come through this.”
“Should…” Alessandra started quietly. “Should we pray? That’s what mom would do.”
Silence blanketed the room as we all separately considered the notion. We’d never been a highly religious family, in that it wasn’t something that took up every waking moment, but concepts like God and prayer were just foregone conclusions.
“Would it help?” I asked. “Do you want to pray?”
“What’s the point?” Chiara asked. “If thereisa god, I might have expected him to show up a little before now.”
Alessandra opened her mouth to protest when the door to my bedroom went flying open again and Natalia came running back in. She was out of breath, clearly having run all the way here, but just as I was about to panic, a smile found her face.
“Lucia,” she said. “She’s awake.”
23
Natalia
There was a tiny, permanent smile on my face as I watched Giorgio, Chiara, and Alessandra drift around Lucia’s room doing any and everything she could come up with. They were producing unnecessary medical supplies and extra pillows and blankets like they’d lived in our estate their entire lives and knew exactly where to find everything. Lucia was perfectly happy to just lay back and let her siblings wait on her hand and foot, not for the treatment, but for the chance to have them around, coming and going freely, without the impending threat of torture or death.
After being kept an additional 24-hours after coming to, she was finally back at home, despite all of our belief that my father would do something to prevent it.
In one corner of the room, not far from where I was standing, Romeo looked like he was going to spontaneously combust. His hands were balled into fists and his jaw was clenched so tight it looked like he was going to shatter his teeth.
I slipped over to where he was standing and laced my arm through his. He looked at me with shock, but it did seem to knock some of the anger out. “They’re her siblings,” I said.
“I’m fully aware of who they are,” he grumbled back. “She doesn’t need all this excitement right after getting home.”
“She doesn’t look like she’s complaining to me,” I said. “You’re just a control freak with your new wife.”
He side-eyed me, but his irritation wasn’t laced with arsenic like it usually was.Was that what it was like to actually get along with your siblings?
I liked it.
“I want them to get out,” he growled.
“Give them ten more minutes. You have your whole lives,” I said.
To my surprise, Romeo didn’t snatch himself free of my hold and also didn’t make any announcement to the room to empty. Finally, however, Lucia took notice of Romeo’s anxiety and held a hand up to flutter her siblings away.
“Okay, you guys. I’m okay. I just need rest,” she said. “Come back tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Giorgio said, kissing her forehead. “If you need anything just call for me.”
Alessandra crouched over Lucia and kissed her belly. “Bye baby!”
Chiara brushed her hand over Lucia’s head before kissing her cheek, and then the Bonifacio siblings piled out of the room. Giorgio winked at me as he passed and I hated the way butterflies fluttered through my stomach or the smile that crept up to my face.
“What was that?” Romeo growled. My heart leaped up into my throat and I whipped my head up, but Romeo was walking across the room towards Lucia. “You winced. What’s wrong?”
It made me instantly sick. I was going to have to reveal my relationship to Romeo at some point, but thinking of what that would do made me want to puke.
Actually, Ididfeel like I had to puke. “Uh, I’ll leave you to it.”
I rushed from their bedroom and down to my own room making it into my bathroom just in time. I lurched over the toilet just as my lunch came flying back out of me, and my head started to feel a little dizzy. The pregnancy test wasstillon the sink, a reminder that the most recent stopgap I’d set in place for myself wasn’t there anymore. Lucia was home and Giorgio was already starting to feel better.
No more procrastinating.
