My eyes locked with his. He ordered all the men out of the room, except forProzioTito. Perhaps the old doctor would still be needed.
In a voice truer than my grandfather’s voice had been all those years ago, my father gave me the truth of what had happened after my body could no longer sustain itself. As I lay in a pool of my own blood, the songbird had flown away from the Fausti name. In her rush to escape, she had an accident that sent her flying over a cliffside on the way to a port town in Napoli. The same town where we had met all those years ago while she performed an aria truer than air. An aria that had entered my blood stream, and growing claws, stabbed them deep inside of me.
The songbird did not land, but had crashed.
My father’s truth was as sharp as a newly forged blade to sensitive skin. It tore apart the line that was beginning to mend, the pain ten-fold.
“Rocco,”ProzioTito called.
My head was going in and out of itself again.
“Rocco,” my father called.
I sat up, and an excruciating growl fought to tear out of me stuck in my chest. There was no release, no medicine, no remedy to free it.
“Take me to her,” I said, attempting to get to my feet.
My father did not help me.ProzioTito could not any longer, but even if he could have, he would not have. No one called for my brothers. Or Mac.
These men understood me.
I did not want help.
Help could not save me from this.
The pain kept me on my feet, kept me moving, as though I was still alive, even if the battle was about to take me.
Rocking from side to side, I finally found my footing and clothes.
By the time we left for Naples, I felt nothing, even though sweat poured out of my body as if it was raining and I had gotten caught in the downpour.
Rosaria had taken me with her, and my self-prophesying thoughts had come back to haunt me.
We are both dead.
As I stared down at the place where she could not find her wings to fly, I saw my body lying next to hers, but with seeing eyes and moving limbs.
Chapter 9
An Ending that Fits
As the television flashed behind me in a dim hotel room, I felt an extreme need to phone a friend. I had a few acquaintances back home, but none of them felt right to call in this moment. I had no family. My mother was my mother, but that was the extent of it—a title she had never bothered to earn. It wasn’t the time to obsess over that, though.
My knees seemed to give, and I released the weight of my body on the bed, bouncing a little. I hid my face behind my hands, but a second later, splayed them so I could catch the moving tribute on the television from this hotel in Naples. The sight of all the mourners made me almost feel guilty for the relief I’d felt when the tree gave, and Rosaria Caffi was out of my sight and life.
Daughter of a whooo?—!
The echo of her voice haunted me—not all the time, but in the dark moments before bed when the world was quiet.
The great thing about Italians? They were night owls. I tried to keep the schedule so that I didn’t have that much time on my hands. But time was out of my control, and sooner or later, I would have to succumb to it. And like I had expected, the stalker and the ghost of Rosaria Caffi turned up in my nightmaresto chase me down.
I longed to be on Aria Island. Sun always did my soul good, and that was the direction I always took in my life. Nonna had always said that to me.Follow the things your soul craves, Amora, and if they fill it up and keep you at peace, keep them close.
She always called me by my middle name like it was only a nickname. But she said I was love to her, and so she called me that. And that was Nonna. A woman who never searched for the happiness that monetary things could bring.Fleeting,she had called those things.She looked for the deeper meanings in the things that couldn’t be bought.She valued love and cherished it.This is why I cherish you, Amora,she had always said to me when I was feeling blue.
I was prone to bouts of blue. My father had been too. Nonna said I had inherited that from him, and it was the mark of a creative brain that spoke the stories of the heart. She didn’t care for thrillers. She had always been entranced by…romance. She always joked that it was the Italian in her. I wasn’t opposed to writing them, but a story hadn’t found me and bugged me enough to write it yet. Maybe it never would. And that was something I thought about when my money started to run thin.
Money, or lack of keeping track of it, was an affliction of mine. Just like always forgetting to check the gas level in my car, I never worried about money until I was almost out of it. It always seemed like, when I had too much of it, it disappeared on me. I flinched when I checked my bank account occasionally and realized I didn’t have enough money to pay the bills after Nonna died. Even when she was sick, she took care of that for me. She said it was not good enough to try to remember all the money I had and deduct all the things I spent from my balance mentally. That was what a ledger book was for. Because my mind always thought I had more than what was in my bank account.
