What did Matteo have to work through?
Scarlett, even though she seemed good at reading minds, didn’t answer me. She directed me down a different path until we came to a lush garden filled with so many plants I didn’t have names for. Little tags said their names, but I still hadn’t heard of most of them.
Mia joined us and sat down on the iron bench placed before the garden. She set her hand on her stomach, almost protectively, and sighed—it sounded so sad.
The wind blew cool against my warm skin, and I shivered. Needing to move, I started to explore the garden next to the one with the tags. Roses. Lots of them were in bloom. The smell of them was perfume in the air. I was drawn to them. I wasn’t sure why, but Scarlett and Mia seemed to be watching me.
At the same time the thought came into my mind, something before one of the rose bushes caught my eye. It was a little flat metal sign. I wasn’t sure what else to call it.
It said:
Matteo’s Garden.
Un po 'di lei. Un po 'di lui. Sarà sempre. Protetto in cielo.
A little of her. A little of him. Always will be. Protected in heaven.
I was confused by the words. This was Matteo’s garden, butherandhimwere protected in heaven?
I thought the wind had blown again and had sighed, but it was Scarlett suddenly standing next to me. Even though she’d had a glass or two of wine, she hadn’t drunk like the other ladies had. I could smell it on her breath, but it was faint, like her rose perfume.
I pointed down. “Is this for Matteo?”
“For our first Matteo,” she whispered, bending down and gently wiping off the metal sign with her fingers. It was already clean, but she did it anyway. “Matteo was named after him. Given the life he never had.” She stared at the sign until she looked up at me.
“I don’t understand,” I whispered.
She sighed, and for whatever reason, she seemed weak. I gave her my hand, like she did for me before, and she took it, not letting go.
She cleared her throat. “Brando and I were not going to have children,” she said in a small voice—a voice I’d never heard her use before. “Then…I got pregnant unexpectedly and didn’t know it. At the time, the Nemours wanted me to dance. I had danced for them, but things went sour, to say the least, and, well, a war started between us and them.” Her hand held on tighter to mine. “Olivier was able to get to me. He punched me in the stomach. And…we lost our first Matteo.”
Those people were whatever was worse than horrible, and the horror story Scarlett just told me was no surprise. But the truth of what she’d just said stole my breath and made tears run down my cheeks. Instead of trying to figure out what to say, which wasn’t going to heal her anyway, I hugged her. We cried together, because we’d both been abused by them.
We pulled away, and we were both trying to dry each other’s tears.
“How did it start for you?” I whispered.
“Before I left for Paris, Brando and I…separated for a while. When I got to Paris, I was extremity lonely and depressed. The Nemours scout for dancers to use. I was the one they wanted.”
“Did he turn you into some kind of freak?”
“You mean, did he make people believe I was not of this world? That I was somehow magical?”
“Yes.”
“He did.”
It felt so good to talk about this with someone who could understand. “You probably know this already, but it feels good to say it. My mom left me with Henri, for some reason. I think he’s my dad, because I’d met him before in Louisiana. Régine told me he was there to…find you, so I put the pieces together and figured that’s how he met my mom. She was a dancer at a strip club. Anyway, after mom left me with Henri, Régine stepped in and took over my care.
“Henri would talk to me and stuff, but he never really had anything to do with me either. I think he was afraid of Régine. Maybe of what she would do to me if he tried to be nice to me. One day, she came down to see me. She’d stuck me in the servants’ area of the house. I was dancing like my mom used to, mixing it up with what I’d learned in dance school. My mom had taken the extra job for extra money and enrolled me. She said she wanted me to dance proper. That was when Régine started to prepare me for a life I never wanted.”
Scarlett took my face in her hands and looked into my eyes. “That family stole so much from us,” she whispered, her eyes flickering to the marker then back to mine. “It’s hard, but you’ll have to find a way to work through all that they put you through. You will have to learn how to live with what they’ve done and keep moving forward. You have such a beautiful life ahead of you. You are a star, bright and so magnetic.”
Our eyes locked, and I knew what she was saying, but I didn’t have the courage to just come out and say it. They stole my mom away from me, somehow, and I’d have to learn how to live with that, while also living without the shadow of it always stealing my sun.
That meant I’d have to face it first. I wasn’t ready.
Scarlett nodded. “Matteo is strong. He’s his father’s son. He’ll help. He’ll carry some of the burden so it won’t weigh you down.”
