“There’s Marciano and Maestro,” my sister-in-law said, her voice soft. “Why don’t we make dinner, Sistine, while Matteo and Mariano talk to Marciano and Maestro?”
Mia and Saverio were still at the hospital with her mamma and papà. I assumed one of them had called and given the news about Gramps to Matteo. It all just seemed so…unexpected. We had just been speaking to him. He had been laughing, and he was…andato.
A few seconds.
A few minutes.
A few hours.
Gone.
Rising on my toes, I kissed my husband on the cheek, then barely touched my brother-in-law on the arm on the way into the house. I followed Stella in. She sighed, and I did as well after we were inside.
Stella was a…movie star, and this was exactly what she reminded me of. Her hair was a beautiful shade of strawberry blond, thick and wavy, and her skin seemed to have crushed gold underneath the surface. She just seemed to… glow.
Her eyes were blue, but they were closer to grey on the color wheel. There was something otherworldly about her that I did not have a word for, except to label her as such. I noticed my brother-in-law’s eyes when she was around. They seemed to lighten. Not as dark. He seemed to lighten when she was close, not only physically but someplace deeper, as if his wife was the reason his lot in life was lighter, the demands on him as the future ruler of the Fausti family not as burdensome.
The star and I worked silently side by side, except for conversation about the dinner we were preparing. We both seemed lost to our own thoughts.
I was lost to the thoughts of…life.
A life without my husband.
I thought of Scarlett’s mamma, Pnina, and it seemed I could not take her shoes off—I could not stop imagining walking this earth without my husband next to me.
Even the thought of it caused a pain I had never felt before. It was as if a place inside of me, always there but quiescent, had taken a breath, come to life, and it would never again allow me to forget that it existed. It was an ache that could not be silenced unless my husband was next to me and we breathed in the same air, existed underneath the same sky.
Sighing out a trembling breath, I used the back of my hand to wipe my eyes as I chopped onions. I could not stop the tears. My sister-in-law’s eyes were glossy, as if she might cry tears of mercury.
We squeezed hands, a silent acknowledgement of our feelings. We were feeling the same. I handed her an onion, and we both cried silent, anguished tears as we prepared a solemn meal.
Chapter 52
Sistine
Dark clouds moved over us the day of Gramp’s funeral.
A storm was brewing, and the humidity felt as if it was making the atmosphere weep. However, once the storm finally broke, I was still not sure if the sogginess would lessen.
My simple black crochet dress, a tan slip underneath, felt as if it had absorbed the water in the air, and I was soaked to the bone. I ran a hand along my slicked hair, pulled back into a low bun, to make sure none of the pieces had escaped and were rising with the tide of the tropical atmosphere.
My heels sank into lush grass as Mariano led me away from the grave, where his grandfather would be placed into a tomb the size of a small house.
The grandchildren were setting roses on Gramp’s coffin before the line moved to allow his daughters and their husbands to say their final goodbyes. His wife would be last in line.
I expected a man like Mariano’s maternal grandfather to have hundreds of mourners at the graveside. At the funeral home and church there were, mostly men in suits who reminded me of Everett Poésy. Some of these men seemed stricken, as if they had lost a good friend. When I had mentioned this toMariano, he had made one of those dubious noises from his chest.
“More like lost a lucrative business deal.” He had told me that his grandfather was a very wealthy “oil man.” His mamma had come from “old money.” I presumed this meant Scarlett’s father’s family had always been rich.
I could believe this about those men who only came to mourn lost opportunities. I caught a few of these men eyeing my sister-in-law.Papà Brando had shaken his head at Matteo, as if to say,not here, not now. He did the same to Mariano. If eyes had been on me, I did not notice. My husband and his family had my sole focus.
The entire situation felt as it should to me—solemn and lonely, the weather seeming to reflect the morose tone of the day. Papà Brando and his sons added to this picture—strong men in suits who stood tall and as stoic as statues.
However, I felt the tremble in my husband’s bones when his sister cried; when his mamma said her last goodbyes to her father, sending him off with two roses, one for her brother, who would finally be reunited in the tomb with his father; and when he looked at his grandmother, who we all calledBabica, who seemed to be keeping strong, but I had a feeling underneath the surface, so much had to be going on inside of her.
I could not stop crying. A slow leak of tears continued to fall at the reminder of how precious life was. How short it could be, even when a person lived to be a hundred.
ProzioTito had once said, “It happens so fast. Just yesterday, I was running free in the fields of my home, and today…I can barely walk. Ah.” He had shrugged, holding up his hands. “This is life.”
