Atta’s family was accepting of her and Angelo’s love. Their marriage. The rest of their lives together. My parents would not welcome my husband into their home. They would not approve of our love. Our marriage. The rest of our lives together. They would scorn it. Disrespect it.
My sister…
I shivered at the same time a cold wind whistled past.
Mariano pulled me even closer, always attempting to warm me enough that I would melt into his skin, so he could carry me wherever he went. And although this was not physically possible, I believed it was between us. I felt as if I was inside of him, underneath his skin, the same way he was inside of me, underneath my skin. I set my lips over the pulse in his neck, and he sighed out.
We were still rocking, watching the world around us change, but only as the seasons did.
Were any of the seasons ever jealous of another? Did the winter long to be warm as the summer was, or was the summer ever scorned because it could never be as cold as winter?
Perhaps this jealousy was why Luca Fausti, Nonno, waited for our walk. He could tell that thoughts were swirling through my mind and heart. I was jealous of a situation I could never have. A blood family that would support me. I also kept toying with the idea that Luca did not care for me.
He took Atta for a walk right away.
Was there something wrong with me?
The day he summoned me for a “date,” it was not me who was out of sorts but my husband. I could never call him nervous, but that jingle of his hand told me he was unnerved. If the day never came that his grandfather summoned me for a walk, or whichever he preferred for his dates with the new women in his sons and grandson’s lives, Mariano would have been settled with that.
I was not.
I was not eager to spend the rest of my days with Luca Fausti, but I was eager to find out why my cousin had stars in her eyes after he had kissed her hand and then given it to Angelo.
At the rehearsal dinner, before the wedding, Luca had stood from his seat and gave a toast. He had approved of my cousin and Angelo’s union. I did not know what would have been done if he had not. The wedding was the next day. I had rolled my eyes at the table, after the speech was over and almost everyone had left, of course, and I was thinking the situation over.
Mariano had smoothly taken the wine glass from my hand.
I was not sure what it was about squished, fermented grapes, but they grated on my nerves at times. Whiskey, as my husband and I found out, made me spicier in bed. Fermented grapes? They just irritated me. Or made me irritable. Depending on the color. White. White irked me.
For some reason I could not comprehend, Mariano’s uncle, Rocco, noticed this and laughed. I did not roll my eyes at him, but I did huff. He laughed even harder, and damn me, I laughed with him. Perhaps it was because there was no rhyme or reason for it. Mariano held me closer, again, huffing about him not being the one who made me laugh. This made Rocco roar with laughter as he left us alone at the table. I had gone for the drink again, but my husband moved it entirely out of my reach.
He sighed in real time. “We’re so connected, I know what you’re thinking about.” His hand curled around the arm of the rocking chair. “You’re so charming, it’s fucking disarming.”
“This is why you fell for me, Mariano Fausti.” I breathed against his neck, enjoying the fact that his skin puckered from the coolness of my breath against his hot skin. “Charming. Disarming. Almost spelled the same way, ah? They are so connected. They rhyme.”
He grumbled something, and I copied his voice. He sounded like an old, irritable lion, growling about his food laughing at him. I growled into his neck, and he shook his head, as if he did not know what to do with me. “My heart, ladies and gentlemen. My Annie.” He seemed to be speaking to the horses. Neither of them looked up from their grazing.
I sighed, humming a song stuck in my head, and used my fingers to caress across his collarbone, back and forth. His legs did not stop, but his breaths came slower, and he closed his eyes, his fist relaxing. I made a trail from his collarbone to his heart, and then to his left hand, feeling the cool metal of the simple band I had placed there.
The weather might have been cold, but warmth rushed through me, making me feel hot. My cheeks felt almost scalded. I set my free hand against one, closing my eyes, remembering when Luca Fausti had told me how beautiful I looked for our date, and my cheeks did the same thing. My eyes had gone down, I had smoothed out my dress, and then my eyes met his straight on.
“That is it,” he had said. “That look. “This is why my grandson’s heart is gone.”
Mariano had looked between his grandfather and me. Then, after he kissed my hand, he gave it to his grandfather to take. Magpie beamed at Luca, then her grandson. She took Mariano by the arm and told him to take her outside, where she couldsee where I planned on planting a garden. Brando grinned in the shadows. He had been as interested in updating the property as Mariano was. Son and father had discussed all that could be done, restored or redone, while Scarlett and I spoke mostly of the design. The men were out for hard work.
Magpie called Scarlett over, and they walked Mariano in the opposite direction.
Our eyes had lingered until they no longer could.
Luca led me out the front door of the cabin, onto the porch, and stopped when we were outside of the door. He looked at my old boots sitting by the door and at the heels on my feet. I had dressed up for the occasion in a pretty dress. A dress that respected the rules in Italy.
He sat me down on the rocking chair, and with a touch so gentle I shivered, he switched my heels out for my old boots. He even knocked them against the wood and set his hands in both before he slipped them on my feet. He was being gallant, making sure no critters had found a home in my boots.
This was not his world, and in a way, he was acknowledging that. Perhaps if I were a man, he wouldn’t have. However, I was not a male who owed him a different kind of respect. I was his grandson’s wife, and he was showingmerespect.
There I sat—in a dress made for Italy and boots made for Wyoming. The sum of who I was. In a similar way, the scene that completed his grandson’s picture.
Luca nodded at me, kissed my hand. “You are a vision, Sistine Evita.”
