Chapter 23 #2
When I’m done, she takes the mug. The plate.
“You go upstairs now. You don’t gotta sleep. You don’t gotta do anythin’ but be in your room and breathe. You hear me?”
“Yes,” I say.
The first thing I’ve said out loud since I left his room.
“Bon.”
She lets go of my hand.
“And, chère.”
I look at her.
“Niccolò. He been mine since he was a baby with his mama in this kitchen. He’s a fool, and he gotta pay for what he did. But don’t decide who he is to you tonight. Decide later. After you eat. After you sleep. You hear me?”
I don’t answer.
“You hear me, Mila.”
It’s the first time she’s said my name without cher or ma chère attached.
“I hear you,” I say.
She nods.
I walk out.
Giada is in the hallway outside the kitchen.
She’s in scrubs. Tablet under one arm. Hair tied back.
She steps in front of me before I reach the back hallway.
“Mila. A minute.”
I don’t have it in me to refuse her.
She looks at me. Doctor first. She reads my face like a chart. The eyes. The skin. The pulse at my throat. How I’m standing.
“You’re dehydrated. Your pulse is fast. You’ve lost weight. Your body’s been feeding on itself for days because you haven’t given it food.”
She doesn’t make me sit. She just blocks my path enough that I have to listen.
“I’m talking to you like a doctor right now.
If you don’t eat soon, you’re going to faint.
You’re going to fall on something. You’re going to hit your head.
Your potassium is on the edge. You could go into arrhythmia.
You’re young, so you recover. But I’m telling you, Mila, you’re closer to a hospital bed than you think. ”
She stops.
“I just heard you eat in there. Nonna told me. Don’t make tonight a one-time thing. Eat tomorrow. Eat the day after. That’s what I’m asking.”
I don’t answer.
“That’s the doctor part.”
She breathes out.
“This is the sister part. Not the doctor.”
I wait.
“I watched my Papa die of grief after Mama. Years he carried it. Some kinds of grief eat a person from inside until there’s nothing left to bury.
He didn’t have to die from it. He did. I’m not watching another person in this house waste away from grief I can stop with food and water and sleep.
I’m not watching you do what he did. I’m asking you not to. ”
My throat tightens.
“You don’t have to forgive my brother. You don’t have to talk to him. You just have to eat.”
She stops. Then, quieter:
“One more thing. As his twin. Not as your doctor.”
I wait.
“He hasn’t slept either. He hasn’t eaten. He sat at the bench in the garden last night for hours. He’s a wreck.”
She looks at me steady.
“I’m not telling you that to make you feel sorry for him. I’m telling you because I think you should know what he is right now. He doesn’t know I’m telling you. He’d be furious.”
She breathes out.
“I had a brother who disappeared from his own life three years ago. Came back from Moscow and he was gone. I watched him perform. I watched him drink the way men drink when they’re trying not to sleep. For three years I had a copy of my brother.”
She looks at me.
“Then you walked into this house. And he came back. He’s been back since the night you let him sleep on your floor. He thinks he’s hidden. He’s not.”
I don’t move.
“He lied to you. I told him to his face he didn’t deserve you.
I meant it. But what he is to you, Mila, he hasn’t been to anyone.
Including the woman he was supposed to find.
He’s known it for some time and didn’t know what to do with it.
That’s not an excuse. That’s what’s happening to him on the other side of this house. And you should know.”
I don’t answer.
She nods. Like she didn’t expect me to.
“Eat the food Nonna gives you. Drink the water Cassia leaves. Sleep when your body lets you. Soon.”
She steps aside.
I walk past her.
The back hallway has a window. It faces the garden.
I stop.
Nico is in the garden.
He’s at the iron bench. His father proposed to his mother at that bench.
His back is to the window. His hand on the back of the bench. He’s not sitting. He’s leaning.
He’s in black. The cufflinks are on. The watch is on.
His shoulders are wrong. The set of them, too rigid, the controlled stillness of a man holding himself in place by force. He hasn’t slept. His spine says it.
My chest pulls tight and heat crawls up the back of my neck and I hate it. My pulse is fast and wrong. My body is doing this without asking me.
I slide down the wall. My back against the plaster. My knees against my chest.
I sob. Quiet. Hand over my mouth so he doesn’t hear me. So no one hears me. So I don’t break the rule I’ve been holding since they took me, never let them hear it.
Go to him.
Don’t go to him.
Go.
I want to open the back door and walk across the lawn and put my hand on his back.
I want to slap him.
I want both.
He lied to me and my family is dead and I want him to hold me.
I press my hand harder against my mouth.
I cry into my palm until there’s nothing left.
Then I stand up.
I walk away from the window.
I go upstairs.
My room. Dawn.
I close the door. I lock it for the first time since I came to this house.
I’ve been wearing his shirt too long.
I’m done.
I undo the top button. The next. The next. The shirt opens down the front.
I slide my arms out. Slow. The cotton is warm with my body heat. The fabric goes cold the second it’s off me.
I fold it.
Sleeves in. Collar down. Pressed square and set on the chair by the dresser.
I’m in my slip.
The chain is at my throat.
I’m cold. I’m cold all the way through. I don’t think I’ll ever be warm again.
I walk to the window.
The first light is at the edge of the garden. The bench is empty.
He went back inside.
I’ve done days like this before. Hamburg. Naples. The basement under the Benedetti house.
I’ve never done one knowing they were dead. I prayed for Yelena every night for years. I prayed for my sister who couldn’t hear me.
I lift my hand to the chain. Close my fingers around it. The chain Alexei left me when he took everything else. The chain Yelena ran her finger along once, the morning of the day she stopped coming back from rooms.
Mama.
Yelena.
I’m so sorry.
I cry one more time at the window in the first light. Quiet. No witnesses.
I lower my hand from the chain.
I’m here.
I’m still here.
I don’t know what that’s for anymore.