Only Carlo. Only when he was being the brother I remembered from before — before our mother died, before our father's expectations calcified around us like concrete, before the family turned us all into instruments of strategy.
"Hi, Carlo."
Silence. The Moretti kind — not empty, just careful. The silence of people who'd been taught that every word was a potential weapon and the safest ones were the ones you didn't say.
"How's Chicago?" he asked.
"Cold. Getting colder."
"Yeah, well. Boston's not exactly tropical."
We danced. The old dance, the one every Moretti child learned before they could tie their shoes — talk around it, talk beside it, talk above and below and through it, but never, under any circumstances, talk aboutit.Whateveritwas. The weather became the house. The house became the neighborhood. The neighborhood became a story about a restaurant Marco had recommended, which led to Carlo mentioning a place in the North End that had closed, which led to a silence that was starting to calcify into something permanent.
I gripped the phone. The cord wound around my wrist like a rosary.
"I'm happy, Carlo."
The words came out before I'd fully decided to say them. They bypassed the Moretti filter — the careful editing, the strategic omission, the lifelong habit of presenting a curated version of myself to the people who were supposed to know me best.
"Actually happy," I added. Because the first time hadn't been enough.
The silence that followed was different.
I could hear Carlo breathing. Could hear the particular quality of his attention shifting — from the autopilot of familial obligation to something more present, more focused. The silence wasn't empty. It was full. Full the way a cup was full before it spilled — holding everything, trembling at the rim.
"He treats you well?" Carlo's voice had dropped. Quieter. The register he used for things that mattered, the one I remembered from the night our mother died, when he'd sat on the edge of my bed and told me in that same low voice that everything was going to be okay and we both knew he was lying.
"Yes."
"You mean that?"
"Yes, Carlo. I mean it."
My voice didn't waver.
Another silence. I let it be. Didn't rush to fill it, didn't apologize for the honesty, didn't soften the statement with disclaimers or caveats or the reflexive backpedaling I'd spent my whole life perfecting.
"Good." Carlo cleared his throat. The gruff adjustment of a man who'd stumbled into emotion and needed a moment to find his footing. "That's — yeah. Good, Gem."
Something released in my chest. Carlo's approval wasn't something I'd needed, exactly. But having it felt like a hand on my shoulder. A steadying weight.
"Pop's been asking about you."
And there it was.
The warmth in my chest contracted. Not vanished — just tightened, the way a muscle tightened around a bruise.
"I'm not ready for that," I said. The words were careful. Measured. "Maybe soon. But not yet."
Carlo didn't push. That was the thing about Carlo — the reason he was the family member I called, the thread I held onto. He knew when to stop.
"Okay, Gem."
"Carlo?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you."
