Chapter 9
CARMELA
I t’s the day after the funeral. At my father’s request, I leave Jessica at home and visit him at the convalescent home alone.
Where he drops the bomb.
I’m not marrying Dante anymore; I’m marrying Ettore.
“No!”
His face is stricken. That look slams into the guilt sector of my mind like a sledgehammer. He had a relapse last night. I can’t lose him—I just buried my mother!
Personal feelings aside, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that Jessica and I would be food for the dogs if we lost him too… but Ettore?
The machine my father has been hooked up to post-relapse begins to beep as his blood pressure spikes. A nurse rushes in. He waves her off. She ignores him so I take this to mean the beeping is significant.
“I need you to be safe, Mela.”
I shake my head, tears already pooling in my eyes. “Don’t use that name. Don’t say it ever again.”
The nurse is trying to get him to lie back—he’s being stubborn. The damn machine is still beeping.
The nurse turns the alarm off, at least. My father relents and leans back against the pillows; accepting the pills she hands him in a small plastic container, along with a glass of water.
He takes the pills with a grimace.
The nurse returns to the machine, presses several buttons, then rechecks his vitals. Satisfied, she exits the room.
I’m furious.
I’m devastated.
But I’m also scared.
“And you think Ettore can keep me safe?” I remember telling myself yesterday that I didn’t have to trust Ettore. I just had to trust my father’s trust in him.
“I do.” His voice is weak. The funeral was too much yesterday. I wish we’d delayed it rather than suffer a setback like this.
My hands are shaking. I pace restlessly before the bay window, trying to figure out how my life took this turn.
“We only buried Mama yesterday,” I whisper.
I feel like I’ve just stepped into an alternate universe.
The emotions rushing through me are wild and uncontrolled.
I cried so much yesterday, but I woke up determined to focus on Papa and Jessica, the family I have left.
And Dante. How I was ready for him to sweep me away on my eighteenth birthday and make all this right. I didn’t even care about a fancy wedding or college. I just wanted to become his wife because, in my mind, he represented a source of stability in this tumultuous time.
I keep waiting to wake up from this nightmare.
“Dante?”
“He already knows,” my father says.
My eyes snap to him. “That’s it? He just meekly walks away?”
“What do you expect, Carmela? He is a good man. One who understands the family always comes first. He knows this is best for you and Jessica. He accepts Ettore is the right man to keep you both safe.”
My legs have the constitution of cooked noodles. I sit down in the chair beside the window and stare blindly out.
What was I expecting?
Dante is no white knight about to rush in and save me. He puts the family first. He has his own agenda.
I can’t cry. There is nothing left. My thoughts cartwheel over yesterday’s events, how attentive Ettore was, how Dante barely said a word. This was already decided; maybe it had been for a while. They were just waiting to get Mama’s funeral out of the way before they told me.
“I don’t think I can do this,” I say.
“I know that you can.”
The words linger between us. Does Ettore’s sister know? I believe she must. Damn, that woman is going to be my sister.
Cosmo will be my brother by law.
I shudder.
I wish I could accept all my father says on faith, but I’m struggling.
Jessica is going to be devastated.
A sharp spike of protectiveness pierces the numb shroud.
Dante is already gone, along with the dream of a happy ever after with him.
There is no out. I have no life skills—it’s not like I can run away from this.
People with far more street smarts than me have tried and failed.
And I don’t want to leave Jessica either way, nor my father, although I don’t much understand nor even like him right now.
But I do love him.
And I trust him.
Ettore has done nothing to make me think of him as a monster. He’s just older. He’s not the man I envisioned marrying. I don’t dislike him. I don’t know him well enough to.
Is this me resigning myself to my fate?
I believe that it is.
Jessica doesn’t like him, but as a child who has just lost her mother, she is hardly in a sound frame of mind to make judgments.
Am I?
Probably not. Yet the memory of him going through Papa’s study, taking documents, lingers. “He has been making himself very much at home.” The words come out in the manner of a challenge.
“As he will do,” my father says tiredly.
His words find another chink in the numbness. I rise and go to his bedside. “No more hiding things, Papa.”
His face tells me I won’t like what I hear even before he speaks.
“I’m not going to walk again. The house will never be my home, not without significant renovations.” I go to speak, but he takes my hand, and it silences me. “It’s old and not remotely practical for a man in a wheelchair. It was the home I shared with your mother. But your mother has gone.”
My sore eyes sting, and fresh tears well.
“I’ve told Ettore it is his, a wedding gift to you both.” He squeezes my hand. “Make happy memories there, Carmela. He will take care of you. Ensure you want for nothing. That you’re safe.”
Safe.
He has used that word several times, and each one only makes me feel less so.
He’s never coming home.
“Jessica?”
“Will come and live with me. I’ll take Nina and a few of the staff. The rest will remain with you. It’s going to take a lot of adjusting for all of us.”
“When would I…” God, I can’t even say the word. I swallow. “… marry him? It would be after college, right?”
He shakes his head. “Ettore is a traditional man. He would want to marry you as soon as can be arranged after you turn eighteen.”
With those words, he shatters my hope for a reprieve, for time to get used to this idea and maybe to build a relationship with Ettore before I’m expected to grace his bed.
Traditional: something tells me I’m going to learn to hate that word.
“This is bullshit.” Jessica paces the confines of her room.
I don’t pull her up for swearing. We are all way past that.
“How could Papa do this? How could he marry you to that pig?” She continues to pace, oblivious to the wounds her careless words inflict.
“He’s going to be my husband,” I say quietly. “I don’t want to think about him as a pig.”
She stops her pacing and her sad eyes find mine.
I’m wrung out. After the conversation with my father, I went for a walk around the grounds of the convalescent home where he stays, one of our family’s soldiers following me. Just a reminder that I’m never truly alone.
I keep waiting for a miracle, for Dante to storm the home and tell me that he’s not going to stand by, that he wants me for his wife.
To tell Ettore to go to hell.
But he doesn’t, does he? Instead, I’m feeling even more alone than I did before, listening to my sister rant, verbalizing everything I feel, but cannot say.
“Dante won’t let this happen.”
“Dante has graciously stepped aside,” I say bitterly. “He understands it’s best for the family.”
She sinks her fingers into her hair and tugs.
“Jessica, please stop.”
She does. Her head swings my way, fresh tears pooling in her eyes before she runs over to me and throws her arms around me.
“Make this all go away,” she says, shaking. “Bring Mama back. Make Papa well again. I don’t want to live in this world.”
I crush her to me. She may be taller, but she is so slight it feels like I am holding a cloud. “Don’t say things like that.”
She sobs in earnest, and it breaks me apart.
“You’re going to live with Papa,” I say. “That will be something positive. Think of it as an adventure.”
“I don’t want that adventure,” she says.
“Mama would want us to make the best of this. I’ve already explained to you why Ettore was treating the house like his home. Father told him this would be his wedding gift to us.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“It’s what I have to believe.” Today, I’m still seventeen.
Very soon, I’m going to be eighteen. Those distant plans for college are precisely that, distant.
Ones that will never come to fruition now.
“I will be marrying him whether I want it or not. I have to find the best in this. Please help me to find the best.” My voice breaks. “I can’t do this alone.”
She may be taller, but the face that stares back at me still carries the softer lines of adolescence.
Before her, I feel inexplicably old.
“Dante’s a pig, too,” she says vehemently.
I shake my head in warning, although I should probably be grateful to see the passionate side of her return. Far better than the declaration about her not wanting to go on. “He’s not a pig.”
Her lips twitch. “Fine. He’s a sexy pig.”
I don’t want to think about Dante anymore, nor how attractive I find him despite how he always held himself in reserve. A sense of betrayal lingers, firstly by my father and then from the man I thought I would marry.
Worse is the realization that they have been orchestrating my future behind my back. Treating me like the child that I suppose I still am today.
But not for much longer.
“You’re still going to college, at least,” she says with a note of challenge.
“No.”
“Maybe if you ask him?—”
“Jessica.”
“Fine, I know I’m making this worse. Tell me what I can do to help.”