“Yeah, well. We’ve had our differences, your dad and me. But you got a good family. Show me how sorry you are by sticking close to your mom and dad and not scaring them anymore.”
“Yes, sir.” Ben told himself that it didn’t matter what Mr. Cillo thought he meant, only that he said it. He had been mistaken in his belief about Mira’s father, and now he had atoned.
“And stay away from the quarry. Nothing good comes out of that place.” He raised his arm to close the door, ready to sulk back into the dim.
Ben wondered if he understood the irony of what he’d said—the quarry had given him a living, and it had taken away his daughters. The filter was gone. Before he could stop himself, he said, “It’s like the Bible says. First it gives, then it takes away.”
Mr. Cillo let his arm fall. He opened and closed his fists. Ben cringed, ready for him to come after him, deliver him a smack for his insolence. But the wrinkles around his eyes grew soft, and his fists loosened at his waist.
“I feel sorry for you, kid,” he said, shaking his head. “That coach really messed you up, didn’t he?”
Ben felt the emotion rising in his throat. There was a time when he would have done physical violence to Mr. Cillo for his words. But Ben was beginning to master his own white-hot rage. Turn it into something else.
He straightened his shoulders and turned away from the Cillos’ home. There was nothing here that he wanted.
APRIL 2016
Pale thimbles floated in a congealed Crock-Pot of pasta e fagioli. Spatulas under squares of lasagnas in colored Pyrex invited takers, but every slice remained. Children had filched all of the Jordan almonds from the pizzelle trays, and the cookies lay unadorned.
Everything had gone switchback, sideways, wrong. Francesca couldn’t take it any longer. Mr. Falso had spent the entire night counseling her aunt, though she was barely responsive from the Xanax, and could easily be attended to by any one of the priests who had come to the house directly from the cemetery. Even her father—no fan of Mr. Falso, not really—had squeezed his shoulder at one point and offered him a cigar and an escape, but Mr. Falso had refused. Francesca was beginning to see Mr. Falso’s behavior as one big attempt to avoid her, and she would not have that. Not now, when she needed him most, for comfort, of course—Connie had been her cousin, her blood—but her spiritual resolve was in jeopardy, never more so than now, since her dream had confirmed what she had begun to suspect.
She would catch him when he couldn’t say no.
Francesca broke away from Mira. It was stifling, anyway, the way she clung to her, gave her no room to breathe, depending on her to get through her own terrible guilt. How could Mira feel guilty when the guilt was Francesca’s to bear? It seemed almost selfish to Francesca, the way Mira sucked up responsibility for what had surely been Francesca’s fault. But that was their way: one body, shared blood. Mio sangue.
Mira tugged at her sleeve. “Will you ask Daddy if we can go home?”
Francesca caught her reflection in a mirror. She was a ghost of herself, in her favorite black dress, the same one she’d worn to the wake, shapeless skin and bones under a cheap spandex blend, with hollows under her eyes. She looked like crap, really. But that was to be expected when your little cousin dies.
But not Mira.
Somehow Mira looked okay, in her flowy dress, her eyes sad but beautiful. Surely she had been tortured as much as Francesca by what happened to Connie. It had been a dumb trick, a stunt too soon to try, since she’d had so little time to explore her latest power. Mr. Falso’s waning interest had set her on an accelerated time line. Francesca’s eyes narrowed on Mira. Her cheeks had color; Mira hadn’t lost weight like she had. Her small belly was soft and slightly rounded under her dress, her arms still full. Perhaps Mira felt less guilty, because she’d tried to use the pen to save Connie? What ever happened to that pen?
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mira said.
“It’s nothing.” Francesca smiled gently. “I’ll ask Daddy if we can go in a minute. I promise. Stay here and don’t talk to anyone.” She waited half-hidden behind the corner of the Villelas’ hutch until Mr. Falso broke away to get her aunt a paper cup of punch. The other women seemed relieved as they swarmed Mrs. Villela’s chair; they couldn’t leave without sharing regrets and a proper goodbye, and Mr. Falso’s monopolizing had stalled them for a good hour.
Francesca waited until he set the crystal ladle back in its bowl with a soft clink.
“I need to speak with you privately,” she said curtly.
Mr. Falso spun and punch splashed onto his curled hand. With his eyebrows raised, the creases in his forehead and around his eyes and mouth seemed deeper than before, making him look old and clownish. Francesca set the thought aside.
“Now.”
“Of course!” Mr. Falso looked over Francesca’s head toward Mrs. Villela, surrounded by mavens, not in need of punch anytime soon. He set it down on the table and forced his expression into something more sober. “How are you doing, Francesca?”
“Privately.”
“Yes, right.” They walked past clumps of neighbors and Connie’s classmates to the back of the house. Each time he turned for approval, Francesca shook her head. Finally, they came to the back stairs.
“Up here,” Francesca said, mounting the stairs.
“Francesca, I don’t think—”
“I don’t care what anybody thinks is appropriate or inappropriate. Half the guests are only here to look good for my father and my uncle anyway. They don’t care about Connie. She’s my dead cousin. I’m the one in pain. You’re supposed to counsel me, do you understand?” She shook with the force of her words, angry at him, but more angry at the tears forming at the corners of her eyes that meant she was losing control. Silently, he passed her, and she followed him up the stairs. He paused in the hall until she grabbed his wrist and pulled him past Eddie’s closed bedroom door and into Connie’s bedroom.
Someone had drawn the nubby purple tab curtains that covered the room’s only window. Francesca dropped Mr. Falso’s wrist and strode to the window. She yanked the halves apart and light streamed in. He shaded his eyes. Flowers, brown and desiccated, hung from a noose of ribbon. The walls were covered with posters of pretty boys with puffy lips. In a corner, a rigged strip of lightbulbs above a sheet of mirror, under which a slab of plywood jutted from the wall, fashioning a makeshift vanity. The plywood was laden with small bottles of flesh-colored liquid, sticks, and tubes. Above, the mirror was coated with a film of hairspray from cans lined up on the floor below. A stool with a round seat topped by a frilly pink circular pillow came to half the height of the makeshift counter.