Violet stood stock-still, as did the two boys.
Leave it to Mitch to crash a fucking party.
His burning eyes met mine. “I see you’ve been busy with the kid, Fausti.”
“She’s going to have a Bagel!” Mary said, and Mitch tickled her underneath the chin, making her giggle.
I nodded once. So did he.
Violet and the boys started to move, tentative, almost wary. Before going the entire distance, the three of them stopped. Mitch didn’t hesitate to close the biggest portion of the gap, but he stopped just short of going the entire distance himself.
“I’m home,” he said, his voice loud enough for everyone to hear, but his eyes were hard on Violet’s. Expressing all of the words he couldn’t say.
She nodded.
He set Mary down but kept one hand on her shoulder to keep her in place. He opened his other arm. As a flock would fly to the safety of a thick-branched tree, the three of them ran to him, taking shelter in his strong embrace.
* * *
“Where’ve you been?”
Mitch and I separated from the crowd after everyone had a chance to clasp him on the shoulder and welcome him home. We circulated around the area surrounding the pool, a little wooded area. I had offered him a beer, but he took water instead.
It didn’t escape me how Violet’s eyes moved with him. It didn’t escape him either. Every so often he lifted his hand to wave at her. To assure her that he hadn’t taken off again.
“On a journey to find myself, Fausti.”
He regarded me from the side of his eye. I did the same. A few months had made different men of us.
“Where’d you start?”
I leaned against the iron fence around the pool area. I needed to keep an eye on Scarlett. She was making a plate for Violet, picking off of it, then replacing whatever she had eaten. It made me grin.
“Sam,” he said. “That’s where I started.”
“And this stop ended it?”
“Yeah, it did. I made a few stops along the way. I went to see Claudia, the woman Mick was seeing behind Violet’s back, and to meet their kid. That was fair of Violet. To do right by them. It must’ve been hard.”
“She handled it well.”
“She handles life well.”
“But not death.” I gave him a pointed look. “You see her.”
“Yeah,” he said, scrubbing a hand down his face. “I do. She needs to eat. I’m here now, Fausti. I’m not leaving again.”
I was going to take him for his word. He had never outright said that he was not going to leave.
“Mick never told me about Claudia. Or the baby, Nicole.” He uncapped the water, took a sip, and then screwed it back on. “But I knew. The signs were there. I gave him the truth that night, Fausti. That’s why he blew up. I told him that he never loved Violet. He married her to hurt me and he was handing her back to me damaged. Like he always did.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I heard that part.”
The look on his face told me that me being there was a shock to him. As if it happened a lifetime ago, yet he was stuck in the warp of it with three—him, Mick, and Violet. The look faded as soon as it came.
“He told me I was a fuckup, as usual. That if I had been a man, he wouldn’t have had to marry her.Hadto marry her. It was like we were seeing two different lives.” He shook his head.
“I know how this turned out, Fausti. I can’t do a damn thing to change it either. I bleed out a little more each day, I do, man. But I also realized that through this entire mess, there was an innocent woman who was caught in the middle of our madness. Violet has been accused of being the weapon. The truth of the matter is that we both turned it on her. I’ll do my best to make up for it. To honor him the best way I can.”
