Chapter 2
Aurora
Papà took me to Sicily two months after Mamma died. Before that, I’d never left Buffalo. In a way, it had made sense to my six-year-old brain. My entire world had changed now that Mamma was gone. Why shouldn’t the landscape around me change, too?
And change, it did. We went to Taormina in the summer.
I still remember that sun, sun the likes of which I’d never seen in Buffalo, even on the clearest, hottest days.
It poured over the island, making sand glow and sea shine like clear turquoise glass.
Even through the bleary-eyed haze of my grief, I could tell the place was beautiful.
And it was so much better than being home without her, waiting for her to walk through a door that she never would again.
Taormina became a sort of sanctuary. At least at first. It had water and heat and distance from everything I’d lost.
And Taormina had Curse Titone in it.
He wasn’t called Curse Titone then. He still had his papà’s last name, Giordano, not that of his Titone uncle.
The Giordanos were a family with business connections to my papà.
We rented a villa close to their home, and they came to visit us after a few days.
I found each one of them intimidating in their own way.
Giuseppe Giordano for his height and the shark-like gleam of his dark eyes.
His eldest son, Elio, was huge at fourteen, broad-shouldered, hard-jawed, and already part of the men’s business.
I don’t think he even noticed I was in the room.
Elio’s mamma Florencia frightened me because she was warm and kind and it made my chest hurt badly when she hugged me and tried to feed me from the enormous platter of food she’d brought.
She was such a wonderful mamma, and I didn’t have one of those anymore, so I didn’t know what to do with her or the viciously barbed longing she inspired.
And then there was Accursio Giordano.
Curse.
He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, with the bone structure of an angel and hair the colour of coal.
He was eight years old then, two years my senior.
Old enough that he exuded effortless cool to someone like me just by existing, but not so old that he was completely out of my orbit the way someone like Elio was.
He didn’t follow his brother or father into the other room to talk business with Papà. He stayed with Florencia and me.
Neither of them understood English, and my Italian was so limited that I was too embarrassed to try to speak it.
We gave up on games and conversation and instead walked down to the little stretch of private beach by our villa.
I had my swimsuit on under my clothes. At the quiet shore, I undressed, feeling suddenly embarrassed by the faded pink stripes of my modest one-piece swimsuit.
It looked ratty out here in the glorious sunlight, old and ill-fitting and babyish.
I didn’t want Curse to think I was a baby.
In order to prove that I wasn’t, I hurried forward into the ocean. Once I was in the water, no one would really see my swimsuit anymore. And I could show off my swimming skills, honed over years at the rec centre closest to our place in Buffalo.
But the ocean is not a rec centre pool. Sicily’s shore was gorgeous but ultimately merciless. A current I didn’t expect, a stretch of sand that dropped away beneath my feet without warning, and I was in over my head. Literally.
I always thought that something as terrifying as drowning would be loud. Chaotic. That it would involve a lot of splashing and screaming.
But I couldn’t make a sound. My eyes stung. My lungs burned. The ocean laughed, pulsing in my clogged ears, taunting me. Telling me I really was a baby after all. Or at the very least, a fool.
I don’t remember how long I spent that way, suspended somewhere above unconsciousness, about to slip under the way my head had slipped under the waves.
But I do remember the hands that seized on me. Hands not that much bigger than my own, but steadfast and sure. Strong.
They grabbed me from behind, so I couldn’t climb my rescuer the way my body begged me to.
Shame would plague me afterwards for that – the fact that I would have pushed my saviour below the waves to save myself if he’d come at me from even a slightly different angle.
A simple survival instinct, certainly, but one I loathed all the same.
When my head broke water and stayed above it this time, I gasped and began to sob.
Through the salt of the ocean spray and my own tears, I saw black hair plastered to a young face beside my own.
Curse was dragging me, half swimming, half barely treading water with our combined weight.
I kicked weakly, trying to help him while also clawing and clutching at him.
In my terror, I scratched red lines down his face with my nails. He didn’t even flinch.
By the time we reached a sandy spot where we could both stand, Florencia was on her feet, already up to her knees in the water, her skirt soaking wet and her face twisted in panic.
She shouted frantically at Curse in Italian, wading deeper as Curse led me bodily to her.
My legs didn’t want to work. I leaned on Curse, who I only now noticed was still fully clothed. His leather shoes squelched.
Florencia had her shoes on too, beautiful sandals that I feared were ruined now by the salt.
“I’m so sorry,” I babbled, knowing they wouldn’t be able to understand me, especially through the snot and water and tears.
Humiliation shook me nearly as violently as the fear did.
Every muscle trembled as Florencia took me from Curse and carried me to the dry sand, setting me down and listening to my chest, my lungs.
Curse stood back, breathing hard, as his mamma fussed over me.
He didn’t let his gaze stray from me. Not once.
I don’t think he even blinked. His dark hair curled over his brows, dripping water into his eyes that he ignored completely.
It soon became clear to everyone that I was alright.
Other than some water going up my nose, I hadn’t inhaled any significant amount into my lungs.
But despite the fact that I was ultimately fine, there was no doubt in my mind that, had I been out there even one minute longer, this story would have had an entirely different ending.
An ending where the stupid American girl, the dumb baby in the too-small swimsuit, wasn’t breathing anymore.
Florencia made it obvious, even with the language barrier, that I wasn’t to go back into the water. I nodded and apologized once more, wishing the day was already over. Wishing that the beautiful Curse would never look at me again.
Curse peeled off his soaked shoes, socks, shirt, and trousers, revealing swim shorts underneath.
He laid his things on the boulders that ringed the inlet of the private beach, placing everything with exceptional care, smoothing out the creases in the fabric.
It made me look at my own discarded pile of messy clothing with a fresh surge of mortification.
I crouched to fold my things, assuming that Curse would now abandon me to go swim on his own in the water he obviously had no trouble with.
But when I looked up from my now-folded clothes, there he was standing right above me. He’d scraped his wet hair back away from his face, and his eyes were focused and patient. As if he’d stand there until the sun set, just waiting for me to stand up and notice him.
And then he smiled, all quiet sunshine and sweetness and missing baby teeth. A dimple appeared on his left cheek. I wanted so badly to press my finger to that place. I dug my nails into my palms, just to keep myself from doing it.
Curse stayed with me. He didn’t swim without me. Even more than saving me, his decision not to abandon me in the aftermath branded itself on my childish heart. It would have been so easy for him to decide I was too young, too annoying, too much work to play with. So easy for him to discard me.
But he didn’t.
Together, we scoured the beach for shells and special stones, collecting them in little rocky pools like they were potion ingredients.
Inside my head, I pretended I was making a love potion.
Something magical to link me to him long after I had gone home.
Something to make him feel about me the way I felt about him.
Because already, with the vulnerable intensity only children seem to be capable of, I loved him.
For the next two weeks, Curse was my everything. Papà spent all his time in Taormina with business associates.
Curse spent all his time with me.
We shared cups of lemon granita that melted nearly as quickly as we could spoon it into our mouths, plucked frangipani flowers and orange blossoms, and spent so long in the sun that even with loads of sunscreen, my face was perpetually pink. Meanwhile, Curse never burned, only tanned.
I’d spent the first six years of my life believing in heaven, doubly so after Mamma died, because she was good, and it didn’t make sense that she would be anywhere now but somewhere wonderful.
But those days I spent with Curse represented the first time in my life I ever wondered if heaven might be a place on earth instead.
Because being there with him was paradise to me.
Until it all came crashing down.
My papà was agitated that morning. He often was, and it usually had nothing to do with me, so I didn’t think much of it when I asked him if we were seeing the Giordanos again that day. But the mere mention of their name made redness rise like thunderclouds in his neck, his face.
“Never say that name to me again,” he hissed vehemently. “We don’t know the Giordanos. We never did.”
I didn’t understand it then, but I’d go on to learn the story later.
The story of how Giuseppe Giordano betrayed the most powerful famiglia in Taormina.
How, while I’d been peacefully sleeping and dreaming of what I might do with Curse tomorrow, Curse was unconscious in his bedroom as his home burned down around him.
How Elio had to fight through the flames to save him.
How nobody could save their mamma, the lovely Florencia I’d come to love as well.
Her death was like a gut punch after losing my own mamma.
She was gone now. And so was Curse. He and Elio had been whisked away in the night, to be taken to Canada by their maternal uncle Vincenzo Titone and his wife, Carlotta.
I always knew that my time with Curse wouldn’t last. We had less than a week left in Sicily before we returned to Buffalo.
But I always thought I’d get the chance to say goodbye.
I’d hoped, probably foolishly, that we might even become something like pen pals, if I could get my Italian to a workable level.
My six-year-old heart, which had been barely hanging on by a thread to begin with, was crushed. It felt like the most terrible thing that could happen to a person.
But the rest of my time in Taormina taught me otherwise.
The rest of my time in Taormina – which was spent with Carlo Messina, another one of Papà’s business acquaintances, shoring up our alliances and reputation after Giuseppe’s betrayal and subsequent flight – taught me that there are far worse things than heartbreak.
The rest of my time in Taormina taught me that sometimes middle-aged men like Carlo could be more interested in you, an innocent fucking child, than they were their own wife.
And that when darkness fell, and the rest of the house slept, that such a middle-aged man might come into your room.
And do things you had no name for.
I learned the names later.
When I was older. When I knew better.
When Carlo was long-dead, Curse was long-gone, and it was all far too late.