There is a lifetime in his face right now. Fury. Fear. Relief. Calculation. The Don and my father inhabiting the same body, both of them fighting for dominance.
“I’m fine,” I whisper.
His mouth flattens because he knows I am not.
I am alive.
That is not the same thing.
“Inside,” he says quietly.
I go, because I am too tired to fight him in the foyer and because I suddenly do not trust my own knees as much as I would like to.
The living room is bright and warm and too full. Lamps on, low voices.
The smell of coffee in the air. A blanket thrown over the arm of a chair. Two baby carriers near the far wall. Someone must have brought the babies down before we got here.
Nothing feels normal.
Everything looks normal anyway.
That is the worst kind of night.
I sink onto the edge of the sofa because if I don’t sit, I am either going to pace or shake, and I refuse to do either in front of this many people. Even family.
Teresa stays standing.
She is still looking toward the foyer, jaw tight, arms crossed so hard over herself it looks painful. I know that look. It means she is trying not to storm back out there and personally wrestle Adrian into a chair and cut his shirt off with kitchen scissors.
Elena, by contrast, has already moved into action. Towels. Hot water. Clean shirt. First aid kit. I can hear drawers opening in the next room, cabinet doors shutting, her voice giving brisk instructions to someone I can’t see.
Papà does not sit.
He stands near the fireplace, one hand braced on the mantel, eyes on me in a way that would have made me defensive this morning.
Right now, it just makes my throat ache.
“You don’t have any shoes,” he says.
The words are so strange in the silence after everything else that for a second, I don’t understand them.
Then I look down at my own feet.
Bare.
Dirty on the bottom from the casino floor, from the stairwell, from the hall.
A stupid, stupid detail to notice now.
I laugh once under my breath, and it comes out wrong.
“Yes.”
His face changes. Not much. But enough that I know he hears what is underneath it.
Across the room, Olivia lowers herself carefully into an armchair with one hand at her back.
“I’d like to formally register that this has been the worst evening I’ve had in months,” she says.
