Our boots squelched in the mixture of puddles and ice. Flurries danced around our heads, catching in Vincenzo’s hair and on the fibers of my thick cape. The hem glided against the ground, making chaotic patterns in the snow as we strolled toward the rose garden, both lost to our thoughts.
Vincenzo cleared his throat. “You remind me of an exotic animal in that cape.”
“I do?” I asked casually. “Which one?”
He put an arm out to stop me, and we stood still while the flurries swirled in a vortex between us. “A green-eyed lioness, perhaps.” He smiled. “I do not think there is a name for what you are. No, that is not true. Scarlett. That is the name.”
“I like lioness better,” I said, a hint of a smile coming to my face.
“You have proved it. You deserve the title.”
I nodded at this and then moved on, not ready to discuss what Vincenzo felt I had proved. He didn’t move with me, but I could feel his eyes watching.
“He will come around,” he said, his voice reaching me through the howling of the wind.
At this I stopped, keeping my back turned to him. The rose garden was in view, the ghost of the petals’ perfume lingering in the air.
Uncle Tito had set Brando up in a room that faced the rose room, a room big enough to allow all of his medical paraphernalia. I walked to his window and peered in. The curtains were pulled back, allowing even the dullest of light in, highlighting the bed in the center of the room, where my husband lay. His brothers sat around the bed, attempting to make conversation with the man who hardly spoke and never smiled. I knew that, to escape their company, he feigned sleep, or truly met it.
After the rescue, he had surgery to repair the damage to his leg. His broken arm had been frozen to his side. His ribs had been bandaged—those too had been broken. Numerous burn marks, bruises, and stitches had marked his skin. Battle wounds that left echoes of a brutal time.
It wasn’t the brutal time that had caused Brando not to heal though. It was his mind, and the dark thoughts that he allowed inside.
I saved him.
I was put into danger to save him.
He was a man. He was supposed to save me.
My life was worth more than his.
I saved him.
I was put into danger to save him.
Repeat.
These words never left his mouth, but they didn’t have to. His silence rang louder than the voice he barely used.Yeahandno.That seemed to be the extent of his vocabulary as of late. Short, simple, nothing expanded.
He had retreated into a world where he was lost to me, though I was the one who took care of him. It was me he wanted through it all. When I needed help with him, he allowed Uncle Tito to lend a hand. If more than two pairs of hands were needed, he allowed one of his brothers to pitch in. But it was me who suffered his silence the most. It was me who he stared at for hours, not a word or a feeling shared between his space, his heart, and mine.
“Give him time,piccola colomba,” Uncle Tito would say in a voice meant to placate. “He will come around. It is not the abuse he suffered that stunts him. It is the idea in his head that you were put into danger to save him.”
It was sometime in November that he had spoken more than he had since the rescue. I had been picking up his bowl of soup while his brothers hovered around his bed attempting to get him to grin, or to even say a word in response to the conversation.
He had cleared his throat. I went still. His brothers went quiet. Uncle Tito’s head popped in from the hallway.
Brando met each of his brother’s eyes. “I have one good arm, one good leg, and a bunch of broken fucking ribs. When I’m healed, I am going beat the blood out of each and every one of you for putting my wife in danger. For going back on your word.”
After the silence had stretched for long minutes, a clanking noise made everyone look at me. I looked down. The bowl in my hands trembled, shaking against the tray over his bed.
That was the last time he used so many words.
Despite all of the time given, Brando was headed for a placewhere he wouldn’t let me follow. I knew him better than anyone. He was not on track to healing, far from it.
I sucked in a trembling breath, releasing slow puffs of smoke. My hands burned, bled from where my nails pressed into the tender flesh of my palms. The cold had turned my hands almost blue, matching the light. The black cape had stripped me of color, except for my hair, eyes, and lips. My hair seemed darker, more auburn. My eyes burned a fierce green. My lips were the color of one of the red roses from the frosted-over garden.
Brando’s eyes opened, suddenly meeting mine. He blinked a few times and then turned on his side. He lifted himself, shaking his head, using the expression on his face to warn anyone from coming closer to offer help.
