Something soft hit my bare foot, and I looked down, realizing it was Marciano’s owl. He’d fallen asleep.
Eva bent to pick it up, holding it close to her chest. “He must not be feeling good. Anytime a two-year-old sleeps while all of this—” she motioned outside with a chuck of her chin “—is going on, they’re sick. Poor baby.”
I blew out a breath and smiled. “He’s better, but it’s taken a lot of out him.”
“Here—” She set the owl on the counter and opened her arms. “Let me take him. It’s about time to put the bread in the oven.”
“Oh!” I said, about to rush off, but then remembered the solid ember in my arms. I handed him over, the exchange a bit awkward from his sheer size, but we managed it without waking him up.
I stroked his back and kissed his head, but before I could get too far, Eva narrowed her eyes at the figure slipping down the hall.
We were the only ones who had noticed her detachment from the group. Cerise.
Mia and Livia had run inside after their stint outside, heading toward the room we had dubbed my ballet room after Brando had purchased the house. The room he had filled with all the newspaper and magazine articles he had collected over the years. I hadn’t found much use in the memories, but Mia certainly had. She spent hours in there without blinking. I was just glad the room would get more use.
Perhaps Cerise had decided to check on them?
Judging from the look on Eva’s face, we both had come to the same conclusion. Likely not.
Cerise was taking her time in the hall, going over all the hanging frames on the walls filled with family pictures.
“There’s something familiar about her…” Eva rocked from side to side, used to having children in her arms.
“Maybe the ballet? She—”
“No.” Eva shook her head. “I’ve never met her before today, but somehow Iknowher.”
Given that Eva made that statement, it could go in a few different directions. Eva was known to be a…dreamer, for lack of a better word. Perhaps a fortune teller? That didn’t fit her either. She dreamed about people, things to come, warnings and blessings. It was easier for me to think of her as peculiar, like I considered myself.
What she was seemed much stronger, though. In her presence, it didn’t even take someone like me to feel her connection to the transcending in spirit. Great joy and great sadness seemed to run alongside one another in her veins—whatever she saw, she had the power to deliver both.
“Have you—” I hesitated but continued. “Have you dreamt of her?” The question came out as a whisper, and I hoped she had heard.
Cerise had been through so much. The loss of Livio had come close to shattering her world. Even Livia’s birth hadn’t come close to mending her broken heart.
She had married Dimitri, but I always felt that it was a marriage of convenience for her. He had fallen in love with Cerise and her daughter, and despite Livia being another man’s child, he treated her like his own. But it seemed to reflect her marriage with Livio.
Livio had never gotten over his first wife, murdered in cold blood and much too young. Still, he married Cerise looking for a route to forgiveness, perhaps to happiness, but he could never quite reach the destination. Cerise, on the other hand, had fallen madly in love with him. She had desperately wanted him to give up the ghost and lie peacefully next to her warm body. He never had, which gave credence to the reason he had sacrificed himself—he wanted to die in the name of love.
Eva had heard me, and though I could have gone into a deep retelling of the situation, there was no need. If Eva had dreamt of her, she would know the situation, perhaps better than I did.
Feelings two sets of eyes on her, Cerise turned from her gazing, meeting our eyes briefly. It wasn’t me that she took notice of, though. Eva’s eyes reminded me of two teal-colored, soul-searching devices.
Moving her eyes quickly, Cerise drifted further down the hallway, disappearing into the ballet room with the girls.
“Not that I can remember,” Eva said finally, blinking a few times before she turned to me. “But sometimes—” She lifted one shoulder, then let it fall. “Sometimes I don’t remember. Until it’s too late. There is no rhyme or reason to our ‘talents,’ who we are, orwhywe are.”
“A glitch in our genetic makeup?” I ventured.
Eva’s eyes were still fixated down the hall, where Cerise had been. “She’s wary of your eyes,” she whispered. “That much is clear. She knows you see. She’s hiding.”
“Myeyes?”
Resting her lips against the top of Marciano’s head, Eva sighed and took a seat at the table, quieter than she had been before.
* * *
It feltgood to pound the dough into the counter, satisfying puffs of flour wafting in the air with each turn and tuck.
