“You always smell of roses and melon,” she said, her voice drifting. “It is somehow soothing.”
“I’m glad,” I whispered, “that I don’t stink.”
She grinned and wiped a tear from the inner corner of my eye, where it had started to glide down my nose.
“I’m sorry,” I said, holding her hand more securely in mine. “I’m so sorry, Rosaria.”
“I know,bella. You have a good heart.”
“Thank you,” I said, and placed a kiss on her hand. “For trying to protect me.”
“People like you should be protected. You are a rare soul.”
“No,” I said. “No one should have to be protected. Not like that. And not at the expense of the people I love.”
“Perhaps not.” She came in even closer to me, our feet entwining. “However, it is true all the same.”
We said nothing for a while, settling in, and taking peace from each other’s company.
“I do not feel like myself,bella,” she whispered. “I am inside of me, but I want to claw my way through my skin and crawl out. The thief is still inside.”
I said nothing, letting her talk as much as she felt she needed to. I held her hand, listening.
“I cannot tell Rocco these things, things that, as a man, he cannot feel or understand. I see the madness in his eyes when he wants me to talk to him. I try, but I choose not to see that in my husband. He does not deserve to feel as though he has failed.” She sighed, long and soft. “Do you understand this?”
“I do,” I said, remembering when Nemours had hit me. I had felt such guilt and anguish, knowing that Brando was going to blame himself for what Nemours had done. Brando and his brothers were men, the kind with old-fashioned values, and as men they felt it their duty to keep their women out of harm’s way.
Brando had never gotten over not being there when Nemours assaulted me. He felt it was his job to keep me safe, just as it was his job to take the trash out every night. “That’s why I’m here. To do the dirty work,” he’d say, grinning at me. “To protect you from the filth.”
Rocco came from the same vein, the same blood, and I knew it the instant that I saw him—that look of utter failure and despair. He had been lounging on the beach while a man raped his wife. Just like his older brother, he would never truly get over it. It would change him, just as what Taylor had stolen would change Rosaria, but in different ways.
I moved closer to Rosaria, and we huddled together. As a woman, I could carry this for her without the swapping of guilt. I had felt it, but I refused to show it any longer.
“I was told,” she said slowly, “that after Nemours assaulted you at the opera, you stuck your chin up and faced the world.”
“Yes, but that was different. Completely different.”
“How so?”
I couldn’t even compare the two.
She must have read the struggle on my face. “It is different, but not so much. When someone steals something from you, the sense of safety you carry, when they touch the innermost personal part of you without your permission, it is not so different,bella. The action is the only change, not so much the effect.”
“What are you saying, Rosaria?”
“I am saying that I will rise out of this bed with my husband on my arm and face the world with my chin up. I will go to Marzio and Grazia’s annual dinner.”
No words seemed to come to me. It was all feeling. With her words she seemed to shrink to a smaller version of herself, though she had risen to the challenge—defying Taylor to take back what he had stolen. Just because he was dead did not mean that his ghost didn’t linger.What we leave behind is just as important as what we take. The irony is, we take part of what we attempt to leave behind.
I took her in my arms, keeping her together with love, and cried the tears she could not.
* * *
However long later, the sound of voices whispering made me realize that we were not alone. Rosaria and I had fallen asleep, tangled together like two monkeys. But I was too tired and too comfortable to attempt to untangle myself.
Brando did it for me. He gently pried our hands apart, and then slipped a hand underneath me, lifting me in his arms, cradling me against his chest.
I felt soft lips touch my cheek. I blinked to see Rocco standing next us. “Thank you,bella,” he whispered.
