“You remember?”
“Every detail,” I said, my voice breathless. Then I started describing each picture. I even retold the stories about the pictures I’d asked about.
As he set up the scene like he had before, he told me more stories with details that most people would have probably forgotten. This time, maybe because my mind had time to adjust, I didn’t feel anything but a surge of excitement that I could only describe as butterflies.
The first feeling of falling in love, but somehow it was stronger for me. The scenes weren’t happening twice in my life, but the feelings were.
“Is this really my life?” I said, a big grin on my face as I gazed at the entire montage. This time, he added pictures of Angelia, and all the pieces together had never felt so right. We just needed one of the four of us—Aniello, me, Angelia, and Bambina.
When he didn’t answer, I turned around to find him staring at the pictures too. After a minute or two, his eyes found mine, and he nodded.
He made no noise as my body collided with his and my arms wrapped around his neck and my legs around his waist. He held me so close that it almost seemed like he was trying to make us into one person.
Leaning my head against his, closing my eyes, I whispered, “I love our life.”
“This is a life worth dying for,” he said in Italian.
That was how every piece of my life had fallen into place. I’d never felt so complete.
Every day, for an entire week, I started to feel as if I was wearing the right woman’s life.
All the clothes in the closet were mine—even if a little big. I thought back to the scene in Aniello’s private bath at Club D and realized that I’d had a little more weight to me before the accident.
The before really didn’t seem to matter—it was that I knew what had belonged to me then.
My heart hadn’t dreamed up something that had tortured my mind. My heart had known all along. What mattered the most was that I’d fought my way back and found my peace.
My place in the then and there.
This was me sliding into a life that had been waiting for me all along, and more than anything,itfitme.
If Niello ever tired of answering all my questions, he never showed it. If something sparked his memory, which was a lot, he offered the information without me having to ask.
“This is where we’d come,” he said while we started righting the pieces of the cabin.
“To hide,” I said.
“To be us,” he said.
“This is where we brought Angelia home from the hospital?”
“Yes,” he said. Then he showed me the pictures again. He wiped my tears and reminded me that we still had so much time with her.
Out of the entire situation, that was the one part I couldn’t seem to get past. The time I’d lost with her.
“Paul and Ginevra?” I couldn’t hide the acid in my voice when I’d said both of their names.
What Paul had said to me the first time was dead and gone, but I’d never forget what both had done to me after. How she took my baby from me, and how he upset me enough to make me run.
As I waited for his answer, I set a sign on the counter in the kitchen that said, “Life was meant for more dances in the kitchen,” then turned to find Aniello watching me.
“That’s where it was before,” he said, nodding to it.
“Paul and Ginevra?” I said again.
He sighed. “Paul and I were close growing up. He’d always wanted a brother, and I showed up on his doorstep. From the beginning, we all stepped in line like we’d always been a family. Peppin even sponsored and coached a little league baseball team with the two of us on it. That was how I met Quentin and Abe.”
“He had three major criminal figures on one team?”
