“Oh, daddy! You need to see it!”
He gave a grunt, and then I heard his feet shuffling, moving out of the kitchen.
“Brando?”
I blinked, finding Violet crouched next to the chair, her hand on my arm.
“You look—” She bit her lip, not finishing the thought. “You need something to eat. You need to sleep. In your own bed.”
“I’ll do.”
“No. Uncle Tito is in there with Scarlett now. She’s eating. You should go down and get something too. Eunice and Aunt Lola made a feast. I’m going to sit with Sandy for a while too. I’m going to tell her how much she scared me and how I haven’t cried so much sinceFriendswent off the air.”
I scrubbed my face, trying to see clearly, to fully wake my brain up. Finally, I nodded, knowing that if I was going to keep up the gatekeeping, I needed food. I’d check to make sure that all of the shutters had been fastened too.
“Ah look! There he is. Your wife has been asking for you.” Tito smiled, winking at me, leaning in to offer Scarlett a piece of bread to go with her soup.
She took it but placed it on the side of the bowl. She ate slowly, taking small sips. Not really hungry, only eating to be polite.
“How are you feeling, baby?” I leaned down to kiss her forehead.
“I’m fine.” Her eyes turned up to meet mine. A flash of heat and then as hard as jade. “Is Charlotte here?”
“Yeah. Sounds like they just got here.”
“Hmph,” she said, returning the spoon back to the bowl.
I hid my smile. I loved when she made that fucking hoity-toity sound. She had done that for as far back as I could remember when something irritated her.
I picked up the discarded spoon, taking a ladle of the red broth, drinking it down. The liquid settled in my stomach like a lump of gummy bread, but I did it again for her sake. I murmured how good it was, scooping up some more, offering it to her. She took two bites, and then shook her head, claiming she was full.
The spoon hit the bowl with a shattering clang. Our eyes met, and after a moment or two, she blinked and then turned away, her eyes starting to fade, a sign that she was about to return to the realm of sleep that she clung to.
I slipped out of our room but was caught in the kitchen by Eunice and Lola. Both of them insisted that I needed a good meal in me.
“You need to eat!” Eunice said.
Lola clicked her tongue in agreement and in reprimand.
It was some kind of stew. I ate without tasting, and after, double-checked that all of the shutters were latched. The wind had picked up speed. It whined in the night like a desperate ghost. The rain came down even harder, as hard as hail being hurled against glass.
Donato and my brothers helped me double check everything, and between the five of us, we secured the place. We had just stepped through the doors when an insistent knocking outside made us pause. A shutter must have come undone. I told them to go ahead inside. Dario and Romeo were going to make sure that everybody had a blanket and a pillow, even if we didn’t have enough beds. Peter, Paul, and Mary started to knock on glass, making faces at me from the kitchen window. Aberto had already helped them make puppets, and Rocco had promised to tell them scary stories by the fire.
I wiped rain out of my eyes, feeling the icy sparks soak through my shirt and cling to my skin with strong gusts of wind. I found the unlatched shutter and closed it, ramming the black iron all the way through, all the while wondering how a man raised as Rocco had been could ever want children. Knowing what existed in our blood, how prone to violence—
The thought caught me up short. I stood on the mat inside the door, stomping my boots against it, shaking off water droplets like a dog.
“Oh!” Eunice said, wiping her hand on a towel. She seemed jumpy, like she had the night Everett discovered that Scarlett danced underground. “Let me get you a towel!”
“No, it’s all right,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “I’m going to shower anyway.”
That was when I felt it. The tension. Bodies were frozen wherever they happened to be, almost unblinking. All but Maggie Beautiful, who quivered with fear. The weather unglued her. Storms were her worst nightmare, unless she could escape it with strong drink.
“Why not?” Charlotte said, breaking the tension, but somehow making it worse.
I had come in during a high point in the conversation, it seemed. The lights flickered, once, twice, before they died, leaving us completely dependent on gas, wick, wood, and match.
“Charlotte,” Pnina said, low-voiced, almost sharp with warning. She snapped off another clipped comment in Slovenian.
