“Aunt Lola!”
She lifted a slow, waving hand at me. Like a conductor instructing the band to play light music. “I am all right, child. Help. Help them. I cannot. Just at this moment.”
I nodded, though her eyes clung to the ceiling, refusing to see the world she found herself in. I made it to Uncle Tito, who instructed me how to move and when. To help staunch the bleeding, I snatched a knife from the table, cutting the skirt of my gown into long strips, attempting to make tourniquets.
“I am needed elsewhere! I am sorry! There is no—”
I turned at the sound of Valentina’s voice, commanding but not succeeding. She had closed Santina’s unseeing eyes, letting the girl rest—nothing more she could do for her. But others, others could use her help. Livio refused to let her move, having stuck a gun to her temple.
“Do not stop!” he ordered, eyes crazed and almost glowing with madness.
“I am breaking her!” she almost shouted in anguish—anguish that she pushed aside for the sake of her calling.
“Go!” Rosaria shouted at me. “Go to him! He will listen to you. I am here. Tell me what to do, Uncle.”
I moved quickly, not having to lift the skirt of my gown, since it was cut and shredded above the knees.
“Livio.” I spoke as gently as I could, as though attempting to coax a cornered feral animal into feeling safe. I held my hands up in surrender, blood running in ribbons from the cuts. “Let Valentina go.”
He removed the gun from Valentina’s temple and trained it on me. She took off, in search of other wounded she could help save. All of the unwounded were attempting to lend aide where they could, with only two doctors to see to an entire bloody flock.
“She is dead!” he snapped, tears starting to run from his eyes, mucus from his nose. The gun trembled in his hand, as unsteady as his broken heart. He bit into his lip, attempting to quench the quiver of it. “My wife. My wife is dead!”
The words were spoken with hatred, but no conviction. He knew it, but he refused to believe it.
I nodded, not knowing what else to say or do. No words or actions could ever bring back what he had lost. His world had been shattered seconds ago, strewn about on the restaurant’s floor, and then taken out to sea by a surge of wind. Nothing short of a miracle could touch him, exposed and bleeding out as he was. “I’m sorry, Livio,” was all I could find the courage to say. The words seemed to get lost on the wind. The sound of the surf below moved in. It must have picked up. I could hear it, softly calling, mourning for the desecration of the night.
“Put the gun down, man,” Brando said in Italian, his voice calm and even, but with an undertone that made Livio listen. “Go to your wife now.”
I hadn’t noticed that he came in, his body standing guard in front of mine as the words emerged from his mouth. I wanted to touch him, to wrap my arms around his waist and hide my face in his back, taking every bit of strength he had to offer.
I couldn’t, though, not with the guilt of knowing that Santina couldn’t take the same comfort from her husband or him from her.
The gun came down so suddenly, and with such force, that Livio’s arm swung, not even enough strength to control his limbs. Brando took the dangling weapon from his hand, putting a hand to his shoulder, the only force keeping him upright. Livio’s entire body came down, arms around his wife, crying into her chest with the anguish of a young boy who had lost his heart for no apparent reason.
Tears blurred my vision. The entire room undulated as one fat tear replaced another.
He began to whisper words to her that would forever stay with me, words I would never forget, in a tone that stole a piece of my heart. He rocked her lifeless body, repeating the words over and over.
Romeo had begun to cry for Thomas, a man who was like a brother to him. His voice was hoarse and low. He was making promises—all of the things that Thomas would never see or do transferred to his hands, along with his brother’s spilled blood.
Guido knelt next to them both, eyes filled with tears, his sadness flowing down on Thomas’s face.
Dario was being taken outside, Uncle Tito running alongside—a helicopter waited to take him to the nearest hospital. Carmen sat there, dazed and unflinching, as he disappeared into the night. Her eyes were locked on the scene as though it might never end but was afraid that it might. Her face was tainted with her husband’s blood, the bottom of her white gown stained crimson.
One by one the wounded were helped to their feet, if they could walk, and were rushed off to get more aide than we could give.
Brando watched me, face as hard as carved stone, his heart in his eyes—so much suffering and anguish.
He nodded toward Livio, who had let go of his wife but was still weeping. I went to him then, and he let me, his grip so tight that I felt I couldn’t take a full breath. His head rested against my chest.
“A heart beating,” he cried like a boy. “I hear a heart.”
I followed the path along the floor, all of our dead being caressed by the soft touch of the wind, until I came to a line of strings that had been popped.
Paolo Occhipinti rested in a pool of his own blood, his lifeless eyes turned up to heaven, his violin clutched to his chest, a smile still on his face, and a pear in his open palm.
Chapter Twenty
