“Are you even going to mention it to him?” My voice came out soft, hiding the heat simmering below the surface.
She shrugged. “Morda.”
“How many times?” I asked, and put a hand to her arm, stopping her from pushing the stroller any further. Delilah took a seat next to me, tongue lolling out, dark eyes narrowed against the glare. Sampson still kept stride with Brando.
She shrugged once more, which told me that it wasn’t an isolated incident.
“How long ago? Is it still going on?”
Her hand came up to her face—quick. She didn’t want me to see the tear that slid down her cheek, glistening like dew on a leaf in the setting sun.
“Charlotte.” I squeezed her arm. “You can’t live with a man that you can’t trust.”I said this in Slovenian, not wanting Nino or any of the men to overhear.
“I love him,” she whispered.
What’s love got to do with it?I almost screamed in frustration. Then I looked at the man still going lap for lap, and my heart pulled me in. It had everything to do with it! But could I live with him if he were to betray me in such a way?
The flesh is weak; love is stronger. I knew that, but another part of me, perhaps the one that had been scarred by my father’s transgressions, screamed at me that if the love was that strong, how could the flesh give in to another?
Perhaps we had no choice but to fall in love, but days after, love does become a choice—to nurture it and have respect for it. At the very least, for the person you vowed to commit your life to.
The gift Brando had given me, the ballet studio, soared up in memory, and if anything, it caused my temper to rise.
My hands balled into fists, and my heart beat out a solid drum in my ears.
“You have to speak up,” I said in Slovenian, and she snatched her arm from my grasp, continuing forward on her walk. “You can’t live like this! At least talk to him, give him an ultimatum!”
“One day you will see,” she answered in the same language, keeping her nose pointed in the air. “You won’t be so quick to give him—” she pointed at Brando “—an ultimatum. You think he hasn’t looked at another woman and lusted after her? If he hasn’t, he will, and one day he’ll be in another woman’s bed. It’s what they all do.”
Her words stung me, and I stopped walking.
Did she expect me to stay silent? Listen without comment while Travis ripped her heart out and danced a two-step on it? Did she always have to hurt me when something happened to her that had nothing to do with me?
I knew my sister as well as I knew any good friend—keep your enemies closerand all that—and when I didn’t give her the response she wanted, she turned the fire on me. Somehow making me feel less than had always made her feel more superior.
I couldn’t understand, though, what she wanted from me.
Pity? No, she was never one who fished for that. An admission that I had been hurt in the same way? Yes, that would’ve done it. Tit for tat—but would she want that for me? I refused to answer my own thought in case the pebble on the ground suddenly flew into my hand and then at her retreating head.
“Or my own bed, you mean?” I snapped back in Slovenian. Honestly, I should’ve just thrown the pebble; it would have made less of an impact.
She stopped, her shoulders stiff, and a moment later, she pushed the stroller with even more vigor, her anger—misdirected, if you asked me—fueling her feet.
Even though I wanted to hate her, I couldn’t. She had my mother’s stoic streak when it came to husbands and their disgraceful behavior with other women.
I picked up the rock—Delilah’s ears perked, her body alert—and flung it in the distance. She went to go after it, but I gave her a command to stay put. I didn’t need her eating a rock on my account.
Vibrating with pent-up frustration and anger, almost feeling as though I had been betrayed, I paced. Going forward meant running into Charlotte. Going back meant the men and the house. Neither choice appealed to me.
Then gravity hit, in the same way it does when a rock goes up and then has to come down. I hit Travis’s unsuspecting body as my fists pummeled him with all they had.
I hadn’t heard him walk up until he said my name, and I attacked, enjoying more than I should’ve the smile that faded into open-mouthed shock as I went after him.
“My sister!”…whack!…“how could you!”…whack!…“she gave you children!”…whack whack whack!…“no good bastard!”
A kerfuffle ensued afterward. My sister’s screeches, Nino’s pleas, Delilah’s mad barks, not sure whether to assist me or not, then Brando, demanding to know what the fuck was going on while he detached me from Travis’s person.
He plucked me right off, like a bug that had gone mad on a spider. My kicking feet caught air, and I slapped at his arm to get him to remove the iron grip.
