My heart races as I imagine what my son is going through at this moment.
Mom’s hand finds mine on one side. Adora’s settles gently on my shoulder from the other. Neither of them says anything. I’ve spent so long being the only one. The only parent lying awake at three in the morning, wondering if I’m doing any of this right. Now there are hands holding me steady, and I don’t know what I’d do without them.
We sit in silence for a while. The afternoon light shifts through the window, painting shadows across the floor. Mom’s rosary beads click softly. Adora’s thumb traces absent circles on my shoulder.
“I keep thinking about when we were children,” Adora says after a while. “You and me and Cristiano. He loved you so much.”
I look up at her, surprised. Adora and I barely spoke in those years. She was a toddler when I came to live at the mansion, andas we grew up, she preferred to stay by her mom’s side or in her bedroom. I didn’t think she knew about anything that went on between me and Cristiano.
“You probably don’t remember this,” Adora continues, her gaze distant. “Maybe you don’t even know this. You were maybe thirteen. Cristiano was fourteen. It was the year before you started high school, and I overheard him talking to Dad in the study.”
“About what?”
“You.” A faint smile crosses her face. “He wanted Dad to pay for you to attend St. Agatha’s. He’d worked out the whole argument. The quality of education, the opportunities it would give you, how it would reflect well on the family to support the children of loyal staff.”
St. Agatha’s. The private school that Adora attended. The sister school to Cristiano’s, where all the wealthy girls of Malus were educated. I’d never dreamed of attending.
I picture Cristiano at fourteen, long-limbed and gangly but already well-built, standing doggedly in front of the father he hated and had every reason to fear, and asking for something for me. Then Mr. Montoni growing angry with his son. Laughing at him. Maybe even hurting him for being so presumptuous.
My chest aches. I never knew. Cristiano never told me.
He wanted me to have an education at the same school his friends’ sisters went. The same place his sister would attend. Why? I was just the housekeeper’s daughter.
I think about how he came to the school gates every day to walk me home, even though it meant going out of his way and catching a bus. Maybe in his eyes, I was his equal.
“I’m not telling you this to excuse him,” Adora says. “What he did to you later—I don’t know everything that happened, and you don’t have to tell me. I’m not saying any of that was acceptable.”
“Then why are you telling me this?”
She’s quiet for a moment. “We haven’t been close in years, but I know my brother. He can be cold and controlling, but not everything he does is about control, and he’s not selfish.”
I remember a conversation Cristiano and I had at my apartment after he returned to Malus. I told him that I did my best for Leon, but it wasn’t much. I was tied up in knots seeing him again, and I was both embarrassed and defiant about the humble life I was providing for my son.
But Cristiano wasn’t having any of that.
“Don’t do that. You always used to do that to yourself.”
“Do what?”
“Minimize. Self-deprecate.”
As he stood in my apartment that day, gazing around with hungry eyes, he didn’t see the cracked linoleum and the water-stained ceiling. He saw Leon’s paintings fixed on the refrigerator, the box of toys, the living room I’d made cozy with secondhand furniture, and my beautiful, happy son animatedly showing him a T-rex. Cristiano saw love.
Adora turns to look at me. “I watched my brother for years, Mina. He looked at you like you were his whole world. He wanted to make things better for you, even if his methods were…”
“Crazy?”
“I was going to say misguided.” A ghost of a smile. “But yes. Crazy works too.”
I stare at the spaces where Leon should be sleeping. Where Cristiano should be recovering.
I want them back.
I want them back so much I can barely breathe.
Cristiano risked a beating so I might have a chance at a better education. I don’t know what to do with this information. It doesn’t erase the terror of being locked in that wardrobe, or thedevastation of being tied up with his belt. But it adds something to the picture. A dimension I didn’t have before.
Mom has said little as her lips move in silent prayer, but now she speaks. “He was a sweet little boy. Always polite. But he was troubled, and I worried about my Mina.” She looks at me, her face creased with worry. “He looks so much like his father. His mother saw it, God rest her soul.”
