“I’m not so sure,” I said, trying not to slurp my soup. It glided down my throat, making my stomach feel steadier. “I’ve been friends with Violet all my life.”
“Sometimes I hate you,” she said, throwing a piece of cheese at me. “It’s been hard work being your friend all these years.”
“Eeeese?” Mia said, going to reach for the piece. I handed her one from the plate instead.
“What did I say?” Aunt Lola pointed her mug of hot chocolate at me. “This is the truth that I speak.”
Violet grinned at me, and I narrowed my eyes.
“It’s true, Scarlett Gorgeous,” Maggie Beautiful said. “That’s why I don’t have any women friends. Sooner or later they always backstabbed me. I came to expect it and then accepted it. Some women are not made for friends. It’s the nature of the beast.”
“I didn’t have many friends,” Juliette said, keeping a sleeping Angelo close to her, laying her cheek against his head. He made her look like she had sideburns. “I had cousins. We stuck together. That was good enough.” She nudged me. “Now I have all of you.”
“Marilyn Monroe would have been good enough for me,” Maggie Beautiful continued, a wistful look in her eyes. “We could have stuck together. We’re so much alike. Candles in the wind.”
Violet turned to her, holding a mug of Bombardino in her hand. “How does it feel to be married to Luca?”
Mia held her hands out for her Magpie, and I let her go as I dug into a croissant. I knew it was sinful, but while I ate, I thought about the dinner place we had planned to go to after skiing. They had fondue!
Maggie Beautiful thought about it for a moment, feeding Mia from her plate. “Surreal,” she said finally. “We’re both different people now, but somehow the people that fell in love are still the same.”
“Same here,” Violet said, nodding her head.
Violet and Mitch had gotten married two days after Luca, basically, forced them into it. It seemed to be going fine; they had always wanted each other. However, the guilt still lingered from Mick’s death.
It hovered around all of us.
Sometimes it would hit me when I least expected it. I’d wonder where he was in our group, forgetting that he would never been lost in the crowd and having to catch up again.
I set the torn piece of croissant down as my stomach twisted in knots, forming a tight ball in my throat. Better to stick with the soup.
All three weddings—Violet and Mitch, Maggie Beautiful and Luca, and Sylvie and Vincenzo—were small affairs. All done in church, as Luca had required. He had gotten his marriage to his first wife annulled, claiming that her family had lied about her being able to have children, which was the truth, and was done at his father’s insistence.
It was a known fact that Marzio had arranged Luca’s marriage, but Luca answered to no one other than God and his father. To give the priest reasons seemed unlike him—but I realized that he did it for Maggie Beautiful’s benefit. Perhaps to prove something to her. She was more important than family obligations.
“I wish Brando would be happy about it,” Maggie Beautiful said. “We’re his parents.”
I said nothing in response to this. Brando was neither happy nor unhappy about it. He’d learned long ago that Maggie Beautiful was going to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted. The fights his parents used to get in over him still rang in his ears, though, and I knew he was piecing things together that he hadn’t realized back then about their relationship.
Years ago, I came to the conclusion that Maggie Beautiful had secrets hidden in a garden—one with soil meant to bury and conceal. Luca brought them up as wildflowers, but their beauty disguised the pain of growth.
A young German woman and her husband came up to us, fussing over Mia in their native language, putting a halt to the marriage discussion.
Maggie Beautiful looked at me for help. I thanked them in German,danke!, before asking them which part of Germany they were from. It turned out they were honeymooning in Switzerland.
“Maybe you two will have a baby,” Maggie Beautiful said. “Scarlett Gorgeous is pregnant again!”
The German couple gave her a peculiar look, but she was oblivious to it. I amended my earlier thought. Mia got it from both sides. Poor child. Double whammy.
“How do you say pregnant in German?” Juliette asked after they’d gone.
“Schwanger,” I said.
“How do you spell it?”
I did.
The table erupted into uncontrollable laughter.
