“We couldn’t leave after you told me you were pregnant. I refused to take the risk. I made plans. You didn’t show until you were six months along. At that point, you took medical leave from Club D. Sharon wrote a doctor’s note saying you needed surgery for a woman’s issue. Then she wrote another saying you needed more time off to recuperate—mentally, you were not handling the surgery well.”
Big Bismo wouldn’t have touched that issue and would have gladly given me the time off.
The words ran through my head, but I couldn’t find my voice to say them out loud. I found it for these, though.
“Little Lina,” I said, wiping my eyes, even though I wasn’t crying.
“Angelia,” he said. “Lina is a nickname.”
“The song,” I breathed out. The concert. Even Bambina—he’d said her name hoping it would trigger the memory of our daughter.
“She was born here, in Apalachin. It’s small, and the staff at the hospital believed that we were traveling through when you went into labor. You gave birth under a different name.”
“Then someone told me something—and I ran.”
“Seemed like it. I believe Paul told you something, but something happened after to get you in the car with Richard Dalton. My gut tells me that, whatever Big Bismo told you, someone else reinforced. Or someone forced you into the car. That day is the biggest fucking riddle of my life.”
Going to the boxes, I started pulling things out, trying to memorize a life that was dead and gone to me, yet the physical reminders lived on.
They lived on through my daughter.
I had a daughter.
How could I forget her?
From the pictures, I had her for such a short time. Then someone else had her instead of me.
My baby.
A beautiful baby who was a part of me and a part of him.
My husband.
The man who tried to stop them from taking me because I ran, and inadvertently, sent me flying out of a window, only to crash from heaven into this hell.
How could I forget my daughter?
I held her and I had no idea who she was.
I had no feelings…
“Rosalia.”
I had held her and had no idea how much I loved her—not knowing who she was. I had left her, and felt it, the pull to go back for her. I knew she needed me.
I knew no one could ever love her like I could.
But I thought it was my dog calling me back…the way I used Bambina to fill a maternal emptiness that I could never truly understand.
Looking at my baby through the lens of a camera, my heart filled instantly and overflowed, but the memories weighed me down with a sadness I couldn’t even begin to describe. My mind wasclicking, piecing all these times together too fast—as fast as the fingers that probably took these pictures.
Click. Click. Click. Beautiful baby girl. You have your daddy’s face and your mamma’s eyes. Click. Click. Click. Click.
“Rosalia. Breathe.”
“I can’t,” I said, dropping the picture in my hand, holding my temples. “How—” The word came from my mouth, but my mind couldn’t register it.
My mind might as well have been anchored in hell because every thought seemed to go straight into an inferno. All I could see was the dress Aniello flung into the furnace at Club D, being devoured by the angry, hungry flames, turning to ash.
