If this was a taste of how things would be with him, she savored its bittersweetness. Of course she would have enjoyed his company this afternoon, but doing the right thing was who he was, and she loved that about him. She wouldn’t ask him to be less, even when that took him away from her.
Lauren stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “I’m happy to show your parents the Met.”
And she was. Showing Sal and Greta Caravello around made everything seem fresh and new to her, even the objects she’d known for years.
As Lauren walked with them, matching her pace to accommodate theirs, memories called out to her.“This is where Joe found me that first time we met,”she could have told them when they came to the sarcophagus in the corridor outside the Egyptian rooms.
From there, Lauren led Sal and Greta to the Tomb of Perneb, andthen to her favorite exhibits in some of the other rooms. “Here is a display of jewelry worn by a pharaoh’s queen,” she said.
And here was the spot where Lauren had first told Joe she was going to Egypt someday.“Just wait and see,”she’d added, though he’d not challenged her.“My father is coming to get me, and he’s going to take me with him. He said so.”
In the Great Hall full of statuary, Lauren found the sculpture that had made Joe blush.
In the Arms and Armor collection, she showed them the knight that had been Joe’s favorite. This was where he had told her all that she’d missed since the previous Christmas while she was home in Chicago. He’d told her about the Black Hand Society, the way they were terrorizing families in Little Italy and beyond, and that Joe Petrosino was a real-life knight in shining armor, the only one willing to fight them.
And right there, in the shadows beneath the grand stairway that led to the second floor, was where Joe later told her everything had changed. He had stopped talking about Joe Petrosino. He had stopped talking about almost anything at all, except the art they looked at together. Not until the following Christmas break did he admit that his family had lost their restaurant.
In the gallery of old masters paintings, Lauren had told him that her mother died, that her father was still gone, and that she wasn’t ever going home. Not ever. That this would be her home now. This was where Joe had first held her hand.
In taking his parents through the galleries, she was touring her past with their son. Years of recollections were housed in this enormous museum, and she knew exactly where to find them. Yet, like all great works of art, they still managed to take her by surprise.
As Joe’s parents wandered through the period rooms of the American wing, Lauren realized she was making a new memory here even now. This was where she realized she loved him.
She lowered herself onto a bench between Federal period rooms, and Greta sat beside her while Sal continued to explore.
“This has been wonderful, dear.” She sighed. “I don’t think I can absorb a single thing more.”
Lauren laughed. “The Met has that effect on people.”
“Speaking of the Met, I can’t believe you got us tickets to the opera and that you remembered Joe’s near-obsession with Petrosino.”
“We were talking about him last night, actually. Joe told me about the long wait for his wife.”
“Ah yes,” Greta murmured. “Poor Adelina. After they married at last, her husband told her to keep the shades drawn in their apartment so as not to provide a silhouette for an assassin to use as a target.”
With a jolt, Lauren’s image of their happily ever after began to tear at the edges. “Was that necessary?”
“He thought so, and I’m sure it didn’t take long for her to agree with him. She was the one who brought in the mail each day. So she saw his death threats before he did. Petrosino told her he’d been getting those for years, though, and nothing had happened to him. Yet.”
Lauren flinched at the three-letter word. She knew the detective had died by now, but didn’t know the details. What had Joe left out of the love story he shared last night?
“I don’t know if I want to know,” she murmured. “But tell me anyway.”
Greta took Lauren’s hand. “Joseph Petrosino was assassinated by Mafia he’d had deported to Sicily. He had a newborn daughter. He and Adelina had been married for one year.”
Lauren went cold with shock and sorrow for Adelina. “No,” she whispered. “Not after ten years of waiting. Not after she’d already been widowed before.”
Joe’s side of the conversation from last night took on a new shape as she viewed it through this lens. He had to have been thinking about this unhappy ending. “Joe didn’t tell me that,” Lauren said.
“Petrosino’s assassination shook him more deeply than he’d want to admit.” She sighed. “When he talks of Petrosino now, especially when he talks to you, he’s thinking about the widowed bride he leftbehind to raise their baby alone. And when he’s thinking of Adelina, my dear, he’s thinking of you. He doesn’t want her fate for you.”
Tears stung her eyelids. She’d been blind not to see the full extent of what he’d meant when he’d told her he couldn’t be there for her whenever she’d want him to be. All Lauren saw was a man who cared for her, might even love her, and simply had her best interests at heart. She didn’t want to consider that her best interests, according to Joe, might not include him.
“Here.” Greta fished a scallop-edged handkerchief from her purse and pressed it into Lauren’s palm. “I didn’t mean to make you cry on Christmas, dear. These are risks we don’t like to think about, let alone speak of.”
“I needed to hear it, though.” Lauren dabbed the soft linen beneath her eyes.
Families in holiday finery shuffled past. Men in suits, women in dresses, boys in suspenders and bow ties, and girls with ribbons streaming from their hair like Clara fromThe Nutcrackerballet. When Lauren spotted Sal ambling back their way, she stood.There is the Haverhill Room, she thought,and there the Baltimore. And there is the bench where I learned Joe feared that I might one day become his widow.
