“Oh, you are full of fucking surprises today,” I swear at him, mounting emotion hitting me. “So, what do you need to tell?”
“No changing the subject,” he replies, sticking by his mission. “Go down to her and I’ll come over in ten minutes,” Enzo instructs, leaning against the hood of his red Ferrari. “Go.”
I want to grumble, stick my heels into the ground and not go, but I know Enzo only has my best interests at heart. I take the beaten path through the cemetery, walking away from the parking lot. I have to admit, all this walking is making my leg begin to hurt a little, but I know that tonight we will be just lounging around. Now that I’m almost there, I feel a sense of intrigue pull me closer.
But as I come face to face with the marble vault my father had constructed after my mother’s death for our final resting place, I lose my cool. I have no idea how Enzo talks to our mother when she’s cloistered away in the Abbiati vault. I dare myself to step forward and obey. I reach out until my fingers trace her name. It’s as I trail my fingertips over her name that a gentle gust of wind breezes by, forcing me to close my eyes. As it wraps around me, I begin to melt into a small smile. This is actually the closest I’ve felt to her since she passed away.
“Hey, Mamma,” I whisper, feeling an ease I find so foreign to me. Today has brought me a lot of calm, but right now, I’m at my calmest I’ve been in a long time. “I really, really miss you.” My hand flattens as I find the need to steady myself on my uneasy feet. “Everything was perfect before you died,” I murmur, closing my eyes to hold back the grief I’m feeling. My eyes are stinging and I know I’m going to result in crying all over again. “He killed us all that day, Mamma, and ever since, he just keeps on taking. I wish you were here to tell me what to do to save us.”
I realize that this is far more painful than I had anticipated. I thought it would be hard to talk to a brick wall, to bring myself to find the courage to have my first conversation with my mother here, but it’s more than that. This opens up old wounds, the ones I strived to glue together and cover up the jagged seams of. Backing up, I sit myself in the middle of the bench my father has placed opposite the vault and take a moment to find myself. I’m consumed by a gauntlet of so many emotions that range all across the spectrum. I’m raging inside, but the storm weakens for anguish and for the misery my mother’s stolen life left me with.
“I didn’t want you crying again,” Enzo breaks my gloomier mood, plunking himself down beside me. “I know it’s tough but talking to her gets easier, just like it used to be.”
“Why was it her who had to die?” I ask, a question I’ve spent many years repeating. Why her? Why so soon? Why so viciously? Why not our father?
“Because she threatened to take it all away from Papà,” he comments and his lips do begin to tip up at the corners. “He wasn’t prepared for her to take his protégés away from him, so he’d rather lose her than lose all of us.”
“But she loved him,” I state, remembering everything our mother brought to the house.
I remembered how my mother would always calm him when he was in his worst mood. I remember how she used to have breakfast cooked, giving the cooks the mornings off. She used to wake us all up and days would start with a family meal that didn’t involve talk of battle plans and future bloodshed. She was the calm in my father’s storm, but like all of us, she’s reached her boiling point and thought enough was enough.
When our father caught on, he decided to show her that no one escapes. Blood in, no way out apparently.
“If she couldn’t make it out, how can we?”
“Well, that’s what I want to talk to you about,” Enzo replies, turning his body on the bench to face me. “Bruno, Carlo, and I have been storing away money for years now. We’ve been renovating a house, too. It’s been years in the planning, but I finally feel confident in all our plans.”
What?! My mind bellows, and I force myself to look at him.
“We’ve been getting enough money to set you and Manuel up with the option to leave and start brand new. Not like how Bruno did where he and Allana left with nothing but the clothes on their back. We want you to be able to find an apartment and have some money to help you get settled into finding your niche in life.” He smiles, but it’s not full of mirth. It’s a smile of derision, of not knowing how I’ll react – I don’t even know how I’ll react! “Carlo and I started it a little after Madre died, but Bruno started adding to it when he came back and found out.”