I open my mouth.Green, I almost say, but the word doesn’t come out. Because it isn’t green.
Green wasLuca’sfavorite color. But what is mine? Have I ever had a favorite color? Or is this just another thing of Luca’s that became mine after he died—the same way everything about Luca became mine? Everything from the chin-jut he taught me, to our inherited stubbornness, and apparently our shared inability to escape the orbit of Slava Romanov.
"You know, peanut," I say. “I’m not sure if I have one.”
Anthony finds my answer baffling. "You don’t have a favorite color?"
"Maybe I'm still deciding."
He considers this with the seriousness of a six-year-old for whom favorite colors are a matter of life and death.
Then, he holds out to me the big box of markers—the one with sixty-four colors. “I can help you find one.”
I sit up, glad for a change in the activity. “Sure.”
“Pick one,” he says. “I always pick yellow because yellow is my favorite color.”
I look at the box and reach forward. My hand skips straight past green towards the other end of the color spectrum.
For a light gray that reminds me of winter.
The same shade as Slava’s eyes.
I don’t want to take it, but Anthony looks at me with delight in his eyes. So, I muster up a fake smile, grab the winter gray, and swear I can feel Slava’s eyes burning into my heart.
With the mystery of my favorite color solved, Anthony holds up his finished page.
"It's perfect," I tell him.
He examines it for a moment himself, seems to agree, and flips to a new page. Then, he holds his hand out. “Can I use your favorite color, Aunt Bella?”
“Of course you can, peanut.”
As Anthony resumes coloring, I pull out my phone and reinstall Snapchat. A few seconds later, I’m in, and the photos I sent myself are now safely back on my phone.
Excitement thrums down my spine. This is the reward for the humiliation I endured today and the unresolved tension coiling in my belly.
I open the image and zoom in, studying the list of names.
Vincent
Marco
Dominic
Luca
Alessandro
Nicolas
Salvatore
Francesco
Tommaso
All first names. No last names. There are three names crossed out: Vincent, Nicolas, and Salvatore.
