"What did you do?"
"I barged into his room and..." I took a breath and put my hands to my cheeks. My face felt like it was burning up. My voice hitched. "I kicked his controller out of his hands and grabbed the back of his neck, pretty hard. I picked him up and shoved him toward the door, yelling at him to pull his weight." I stopped and closed my eyes against the awful memory of what came next.
The lady waited in silence.
"I didn't mean to..." I cleared my throat. "He slipped on some paper. His room is always such a disaster. He fell. I mean, we both fell. But he hit the doorjamb. The sound of it... the crack..." I shuddered.
"Was he okay?"
"He hit it with his face."
She grimaced.
"He bit through his bottom lip, chipped his front tooth, and got a black eye." I rubbed my face, trying to wipe away the memory. "There was a lot of blood. I thought I was going to be sick. Not from the blood, well maybe partly, but I just..."
"You felt horrible."
I nodded and looked out the window into the black nothing. "I still do. My parents hit the roof. They told me I had to cancel Venice."
"But, you're here. So what happened?"
I turned back to her kind face. "Jack. He can be a real brat, but he's also one of the most forgiving people I know. He knew I was sorry. I didn't eat for two days. Which is really unlike me. He got my parents to change their minds. He even owned up to terrorizing me earlier in the week."
"Sounds like a good kid."
"Yeah, he is. Better than me."
"I'm sure that's not true."
"How good can I be if I can't rein in my temper and I end up hurting people?"
"Well, Jack forgives you. Sounds like your parents do, too. Why not forgive yourself. Wipe the slate clean, and use this summer to figure yourself out? You're an au pair, now. What a perfect opportunity to practice patience and control, right?"
"Right." In theory.
"Put the past behind you. Learn from it, and move forward. We all make mistakes. Resolve to be better."
My stomach clenched at the memory of Jack's bloody face. I crossed my arms and blew out a breath. "I will."
Two
Six-year-old boys were not supposed to look like they were four. They were not supposed to have dry, pale skin. They were not supposed to have thinning hair or bald patches, limp limbs and a protruding spine. They were not supposed to have purple smudges under their eyes.
Isaia had all of these things. I'm no expert, but I know enough to spot a sick kid when I see one, and Isaia was one sick kid.
My stomach had yet to settle fully and my eyes felt full of sand. But the jet-lag fell away as Isaia approached, carried like a toddler in his father's arms. My mind flashed back to the welcome letter I'd received about my host family and their sons. Cristiano Baseggio - 9, a soccer fiend with a talent for mathematics. Isaia Baseggio - 6, a sweet shy kid with a fondness for bedtime stories and Lego. Definitely no mention of illness. Why hadn't they told me that one of the kids in my care for the summer wasn't well?
My indignation went up in smoke when Isaia turned and his eyes caught mine. My breath hitched as our gazes locked. His eyes were black as coal and grabbed me as fiercely as two desperate fists at my collar.
Pietro's head bent toward Isaia and he kissed his son's patchy blond crown. The tender love the father expressed was heart-meltingly beautiful.
"Sweetheart, can you greet your au pair?" his mother, Elda sat beside me on their couch. She had a soft accent, an even softer voice, and tired eyes.
Isaia, whose gaze had not unlocked from mine, held out a hand toward me. He leaned out of his father's arms. "Madonna," said Pietro, when he realized that his son was reaching for me.
As a reflex, I held out my arms and the boy leaned so far that Pietro had no choice but to hand him to me. My heart melted as the tiny, warm frame settled into my lap. He put his head against my shoulder the way it had been against Pietro's, and his small hand touched my cheek before he tucked his hand under his chin.
My heart pounded. "Hello, Isaia," I said quietly, feeling anything but quiet inside. Questions flooded my brain but for once they jammed up behind my teeth instead of leaping out of my mouth. Goosebumps swept my forearms. Isaia was hot and limp in my arms, like a warm sack of bones.
Elda and Pietro's faces were slack with shock. Elda had a palm on either side of her face, the whites of her eyes visible.
I looked from one to the other. "Does he do this with everyone?"
"On the contrary," said Elda. "He doesn't let anyone touch him aside from family." She spoke to Pietro in awed Italian and he sat down on the stool beside her and spoke back, sounding just as amazed.
Isaia looked up at me and the suffering in his black eyes clamped like a vise around my heart. My throat constricted. What was he suffering from? Why had he reached for me? A stranger. And what had this little guy done to me? I had never had an attachment to a child form so quickly before. Emotion roiled under the surface and I worked to swallow it down. I was probably just exhausted and jet-lagged, just overreacting. I realized Elda and Pietro were staring. The silence in the room felt crushing. "I think we're going to get along just fine, don't you?" I asked Isaia.
Elda cleared her throat awkwardly and I looked up.
"Isaia doesn't speak," said Pietro.
"Oh!" I couldn't hide my surprise. He was mute? Another significant fact they'd left off the briefing. It occurred to me that I could complain to the placement agency about being misled. But as Isaia melted against me and I looked from one embarrassed parent to another, I pushed the notion away.
"At least, not anymore," Pietro added.
Elda cast her eyes downward.
"He used to speak?" This was only getting more strange. "What happened?"
Pietro scratched his head. "We don't know. Doctors can't explain it. We've taken him to see three different specialists." He shrugged. "He has never been strong since birth but he used to speak perfectly well. Then one day," he snapped his fingers and made a dry pop. "He just stopped."
Elda kept her eyes on the floor. Was it me or her husband that she was avoiding eye contact with?
"When did that happen?" I put my hand against Isaia's back, felt the hot bumpy spine under my palm.
"He was three?" Pietro looked to his wife for confirmation.
"Three and a half," Elda answered. Her gaze flicked to mine but not to her husband's. I had the strangest sensation that she knew something about the boy's condition that her husband didn't know. No, that’s ridiculous, I told myself. I only just arrived and I was already making assumptions about their family politics.
"The best thing for him," Elda continued as her brown eyes locked on mine, "is to make sure he drinks a lot of water. He's prone to rapid dehydration. I cannot impress this upon you enough. Otherwise, he's low maintenance. Less than you would expect from looking at him." Was her expression apologetic?
I nodded. “Okay. Lots of water. Got it."
Pietro looked at his watch. "We can discuss more later, but I have to drop both boys off at school, and get back to the office." He stood and called for Cristiano.
Thumping echoed from the hallway and a lithe tanned boy appeared carrying a mini soccer ball. He spouted a lot of Italian at his father, who gave it back just as rapidly.
"Cristiano, come meet your au pair," said Elda.