“He refused to leave, kicked up a storm when Lexi tried to take him away from us. I didn’t mind, he never sleeps anyway. He’s the damn energizer bunny,” Austin joked, shaking his head, but holding his son tighter in his arms.
Dante slapped his hands on Austin’s cheeks. “En-er bun… bun—ee,” he tried to repeat, sounding too fucking cute.
Austin playfully nodded at his son. “Yeah, you are. The energizer bunny.”
Dante squealed in laughter, throwing his head back, making us all laugh too.
Austin sat beside me on the dry grass, Dante perching on his knee, staring down at my daughter in fascination. Levi dropped to my other side and he wrapped his arm around my shoulder. “You didn’t think we’d leave, did you?”
Feeling my chest tighten, I went to answer, when Austin said, “We’re your brothers, we leave when you do. You know that, Axe.”
Clearing the emotion from my throat, I glanced to my sleeping daughter, holding her in my arms and I asked, “How did you know I’d be out here?”
“You walked right past us, Axe. You were staring at your daughter so much that you didn’t see us sitting right in front of you.”
Dante leaned over to look at my daughter and he then looked up at me, his pink lips pursed. “What her name?” he asked in his cute ass baby talk. He was so fucking adorable.
“Yeah, Axe,” Levi said, “What’re you calling our niece?”
As I stared down at my daughter, I got lost in her pretty sleeping rosy face and said, “I wanna call her Chiara.”
Silence met my words and I tensed. I wasn’t sure if my brothers would be okay with my daughter being named after our mamma.
That’s until I looked up and both of them were watching me with tears in their eyes. “Axe,” Levi said, his voice breaking. “Mamma would be so damn proud that your daughter shared her name. I can just imagine how happy she’d be if she was here right now.”
“Yeah,” Austin said, equally as choked up. “Mamma’s looking down at her now and she’s fucking smiling, Axe. Smiling so big.” Austin looked at my daughter. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Chiara,” he said lovingly then Levi followed suit. “Little Chiara Carillo.”
My heart was so full as the five of us sat here in silence. All three of us brothers unable to speak until Dante suddenly pointed up at the sky and said, “Papa... big star!”
Austin laughed at his son shattering our poignant moment and squeezed him to his chest, ruffling his dark hair. “Si, Dante. A big star. Le stelle grande,” he said in Italian.
Dante watched Austin’s lips and said, “Lee stel ee gan de.”
We all laughed as Dante tried to speak Italian. “Bene!” Austin told his son, and tickled Dante until he burst into fits of giggles. “Molto bene!”
Turning to Levi, I watched him squinting up at the stars and realized he never got to remember stargazing with Austin and me all those years ago, he was too young. But it should be something he got to share with us now.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and leaning back against the wall with my daughter cradled in my arms, I said, “Austin, tell us what those stars are.”
Austin looked over at me, and I could see his eyes gloss over at the request. We hadn’t done this since we were little kids trying to escape our abusive papa.
Austin carefully placed Dante higher on his lap, Dante squealing with excitement. He stared up at the night sky.
I turned to Levi. “Look up, Lev.”
Shaking his head and smiling at us, Levi leaned back and looked up.
Austin pointed at three stars in a row. “The three stars there are called Orion’s Belt. You can tell it’s Orion’s Belt by the way they’re all in a row. You see?”
I listened to Austin explain constellation after constellation, Dante and Chiara now part of our Carillo tradition. And as the minutes passed, a sense of peace and calmness washed over me.
We’d made it.
The three of us, lying here staring at the stars like we did so long ago, had made it.
We were the Carillo boys. Three brothers born into chaos and pain. Three brothers who’d endured tragedy and loss. Brothers until the end, bound by blood, our bonds unbreakable by unconditional love.
And I was sure that up in that sky, there was an angel looking down on her sons, a smile on her face and a prideful happiness in her heart.
The End
Bonus Chapter
Axel
The Guggenheim Museum
New York City
Fifteen years later…
This shit never got any easier.
As I stood behind the scenes of my exhibition, hearing the hundreds of voices on the other side of the wall, my heart raced.
The Museum Director was out there now, giving the crowd his talk to introduce my show. Years of doing this hadn’t taken away my opening-night nerves, my apprehension about how the show would be received. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath.
Just then, that familiar hand ran down my back, the scent of jasmine filling the space around me. My shoulders immediately lost their tension and I exhaled in relief.