“What exactly happened?” Nonna asks.
“Well, let’s see... The plane blew up. We thought you were in it. We were attacked. Repeatedly. And Rita... she betrayed us.”
“That’s not surprising.” Nonna closes her eyes and makes the sign of the cross before saying, “I guess that was inevitable.”
Joey adds “Uncle Gio, Donny, Jenny, and I were kidnapped. Taken to Carver Street.”
Nonna swallows. “Carver Street. I see.” She pauses. “Can you hand the phone to the priest?”
Joey shrugs and gives the phone to the Cardinal. They exchange words in Italian. Maybe Latin. I can’t tell.
The Cardinal’s face drops. He rushes over to a bucket and starts splashing everyone in the front row with a shower of water, as he mumbles Latin and a bunch of prayers.
I have no idea what’s going on.
“Carver Street is haunted,” Nonna says like it’s obvious.
“We saw a ghost. Or a ghost knocked over a chair. Either way, awesome,” I say, but Nonna frowns.
Alana leans forward, wiping the holy water off her glasses. “Wait, why am I just learning about this now?”
Joey shrugs. “You were busy not dying, and it didn’t seem important.”
Alana pushes her fingers to her temples and starts rubbing them in a little circle, “what happened to Rita?”
Donny pipes in with the answer. “One of your hunter friends came in and shot her.”
“What?” Alana’s eyebrows shoot up her forehead.
“Yeah, you didn’t send him?”
“No. Let me get this straight, some random dude shows up and shoots a family member who betrayed all of you and shot Joey’s parents, and you’re all fine with that? No sense of moral outrage for a vendetta unfilled. Are you fucking kidding me?”
Lance hisses, “You. Are. In. Church.”
Donny shrugs. “Why would we be mad? The problem has been solved?”
But Joey seems crestfallen as his shoulders sink. “Wait, did everyone know Rita killed my parents?” I rub his thigh.
Waverly shifts in her seat, the Russian boys glance around at all the stained-glass windows. Thiago and the Mexican cartel check their watches and pick up the hymnal in front of them. Joey takes a deep breath and reaches for my hand.
I give him a little squeeze and he sighs. “I guess it doesn’t change anything, and the problem did get solved.”
Alana huffs and crosses her arm in a very big pout. “Ugh. If a hunter killed her, it was a clean head shot. That Rita bitch didn’t even suffer.” The pew rattles from where Alana kicks it. “God, this is like every single sexual encounter I’ve had in the last decade—extremely unsatisfying. Fucking men.”
Hmm, I’m not sure if she means fucking men is unsatisfying or if she’s generally annoyed with all men. But that doesn’t matter. Nonna’s alive. I’m dripping in holy water. My boyfriend is a Mob boss with a dog. And bit by bit, his worst nightmares are fading away.
Alana mumbles, “I can’t. I can’t with this family,” and dips her head, resting it on Waverly’s shoulder again.
Waverly strokes her hair and says, “Yeah. This is our family. You’re stuck with us.”
Epilogue —
Joey
The wake turned out not to be a wake at all—but more of a "Nonna’s alive, the world wasn’t ending after all” party—we’re all gathered in Uncle Gio’s house.
We’ve been upgraded to our new location in the family room. The grown-ups still get the fancy living room.
