“This is why it is probably best to be a cat,” I said. “They seem to look down on everyone.”
“True,” she said. “The only animal that will look the human race in the eye and see that its equal is a pig, or so the saying goes.”
We walked a few paces before I cleared my throat.
“It is nice,” I whispered. “You and Papà Brando taking the dogs.”
She shrugged. “My father and I didn’t have a great relationship either, but I couldn’t see them with anyone else. I wouldn’t have felt right about it.” She gave the dog on her side a pat. Her eyes seemed fixated in the distance. “I felt it…felt something was wrong even before we received the call to come back home. I do that at times, feel things.”
I nodded.
She nodded. “Sometimes I know exactly what’s going on. Other times…” she raised her hands in a helpless gesture “…I don’t. I’m all twisted up inside. It feels as if all my wires are knotted, and I can’t seem to find the one that’ll lead me to theproblem. When I was younger, I hoped one day I would be more precise. No matter how much older I get, or more knowledgeable I become about life, my feelings still confuse me at times, especially when a lot is going on around me.”
“You are still confused?”
She looked me in the eye. “Yes. I’m weighed down by sadness, which can confuse things and make my circuits, for lack of a better word, go haywire.” She waved a hand. “It’s a sadness that has sprouted from regret—regret that I wasn’t able to have a decent relationship with my parents all these years, and now one of them is gone. My father never made things right with my mother. He never made things right with me. He caused me to have this…brittle part of myself that never truly became solid.”
“Trust,” I said.
“Yes, exactly. Trust.”
“I know this feeling.” I grabbed her hand, squeezing. “It is awful.”
“Downright,” she whispered.
We walked on, and I looked toward the sky, wondering if the sun would ever shine again. It felt as though the rain refused to come, and so did the sun. As if we were stuck in limbo, and I was as confused as Scarlett about…life. How Mariano felt about me keeping what Iggy had done a secret. About my own parents and what I would have to face when the time came, and I lost one of them—even my sister. I felt relieved to think of her gone, then guilt hit me.
Who was supposed to feel this way about anyone? Especially one’s own sister?
Scarlett sighed.
I sighed.
“My sister has a lot to be bitter about,” she said, apropos of nothing, although I wondered if she had been feeding off my thoughts.
“Her husband?”
“He’s last on a long list. For starters. I could do what she couldn’t. Dance. Fast forward to the husband. Travis is a cheat.”
I did not know why, but the situation between the evil sister and her husband brought my evil sister and Remo to the forefront of my thoughts.
“Will Remo do the same?”
If I had shocked her by pulling that situation out of thin air, she did not show it. This was why I found her to be interesting. She was different…and all the times we spent time together felt natural, never forced.
She sighed. “That’s a complicated situation. Sometimes the men’s dynamics in the family are more complicated than you’d think. Hierarchy rules, which keeps them in place, but sometimes a man doesn’t want the place he’s in. He wants to go higher. Higher comes with more…perks you’d say. These men who strive to become higher sometimes confuse their feelings with these wants.”
I set a hand on her arm, and we stopped. “He wants me because of Mariano.”
Scarlett nodded. “Partially. I do feel Remo is truly attracted to you, but also, he’s yearning for a love, for lack of a better word, for himself. You made him feel. That can be extremely dangerous in this world.”
“If he wanted love, for lack of a better word, he went to my sister. She’s the antidote to love potions. Why is this?”
“To make you jealous, though he was telling the truth when he said he also did it—” She stopped, her lips pursed, perhaps by thehe also did it, and then shook her head. “He, er, kept your sister busy to protect you from her.”
Both of our heads turned some, our eyes catching in the distance. She spotted her husband, and I spotted mine. We watched as they ran as soldiers would.
“My husband, or PapàBrando, as you call him—” a grin came to her face, fast and then gone “—usually goes with his sons singularly on runs. Or whatever they choose to do. But when things get hard, and it seems that they collectively understand they’re all going through the same thing—a loss of control—he’ll lead them to burn off what they’re feeling as he’s always done. He understands what it means to be a son of Fausti blood, and he’s taught his sons how to work out their issues instead of taking it out on the world.”
