“If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you,” she shoots back too quickly, making me laugh out loud.
I shake my head.
“And you?” I ask, accepting the change of subject. “What do you want to do now that you’ve graduated?”
“Work. Help my mom buy our house and the shop. The only way to do that is by working a lot.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”
“How long?” I find myself curious.
“Since high school,” she admits, and my brows lift. She rushes to explain. “The only thing my mother really wants is something to call her own. Ours, really.”
I nod.
“Raising a daughter alone made that… not exactly easy. She’s always done everything she could to give me the best within her means. For a long time now, my mother has been putting herself second.”
“Your mother is an incredible woman. An incredible mother.”
“She is,” Nina agrees with a proud smile. “Did you know that when my mom came to Greece, she left me with an aunt in Rome?”
“I didn’t,” I reply.
She shakes her head, her eyes turning distant for a moment, as if picturing the weight of her next words.
“She left Italy a few months after we lost my father. It was an accident—a badly treated flu that turned into pneumonia and killed him.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say quickly, because the expression on her face tells me she is too.
She shrugs.
“I don’t remember him. I was only two.”
She turns to me with a sad smile.
“My mother left Italy with nothing, looking for a better life for the two of us. It took her three full years to get settled and come back for me.”
“I remember when you arrived. The wide-eyed little girl following Rosa everywhere,” I tease, and Nina rolls her blue eyes.
“She took me to the orphanage because she had no one to leave me with.”
Nina shakes her head, as if still unable to believe everything her mother did.
“Giving back was as easy a decision as breathing. Ever since I was old enough to understand everything my mother did for us, I couldn’t wait to stop being a burden.”
“I seriously doubt Rosa ever saw you as a burden, Nina.”
“I know she’d do anything for me—but to do that, she had to do almost nothing for herself. Or only the bare minimum.”
She pauses.
“During the years I was studying—even though I worked and earned enough to support myself—she insisted on sending me money because she knew I was barely managing. I had ascholarship, but I still had to eat, commute, and pay for school supplies.”
She exhales.
“Every cent I received was meant to make me need as little as possible from my mother’s resources.”
