14. The Meatball meets la Famiglia #3
“In this town?” Eva asked rhetorically. “We smelled the smoke. But seriously, if an altar boy farts in Kingston, Napanee knows before lunch. Of course we heard. People are saying WWJD burned down because God was offended by your remix of Rhythm Divine.”
“That wasn’t even a remix,” Japheth protested. “That was a straight up cover. The lyrics work well as a hymn. Enrique Iglesias did us a solid there.”
Alma crossed herself, “Fire is very serious. Thanks be to God no one was hurt, eh?”
“We… don’t know that yet,” Japheth said. The words felt heavy, like stones in his mouth. “We can’t find Emma-Lou. She’s missing.”
Leo’s face tightened, lines around his eyes deepening. “What? Missing how?”
Japheth hesitated, glancing at Rino. He was acutely aware of the swirl of rumours around the Ferraris, the whispered theories about the Bermudian disappearance of Emma-Lou’s parents, and the unasked question that his friends had trusted him to finally find out.
It gnawed at him. What if these people he was eating gnocchi with were behind it all?
“We were all at the radio station together, and we had some business with our lawyer so my bandmates, Rebekkah, Ronald and I left,” Japheth said carefully.
“I was told that Emma-Lou went up to her office with… someone. They argued. Then she ran after him. And now, well, no one has seen her since. And as you know, WWJD is gone, too.”
Silence settled over the table like an unwelcome guest. Alma’s hand flew to her mouth.
Eva’s eyes widened; even she hadn’t heard this part of the story.
Leo’s gaze slid to his son, sharp and assessing.
He tapped two fingers on the table with authority before asking directly, “Rino, who was she with?”
Rino put his fork down, deliberately. The candlelight carved shadows along his cheekbones as he looked his father in the eye and answered, “Me.”
Japheth’s heart lurched and he turned to Rino, “We didn’t know… exactly. We assumed because Carrington had seen you leaving the station, on a call. They said you seemed agitated.”
“I was agitated. I was trying to get through to Stanford Weinus and he’d placed me on hold for eternity, again,” Rino snapped and then steadied himself.
Leo’s jaw flexed, “And what were you arguing about with Emma-Lou, figlio mio?”
Rino exhaled through his nose, measuring his words carefully, “Money. Promises. The usual song and dance with the Burns. That we would keep sponsoring the station, that she would keep the station on its feet, that the Ferrari name would not become a mockery in the town, that I would not be the only one trying desperately to keep WWJD alive through some errant act of valour while everybody sings about… I don’t know, God’s butt. No offence, Polpetto.”
“We don’t sing about God’s butt,” Japheth said reflexively.
“Not yet,” Eva murmured. “But I’d listen to that.”
Alma reached across the table and swatted her lightly, “Not helping, mia Amata.”
“And we’ve all been trying to save the station.
Trinity, Carrington, Suwarna, Emma-Lou. We’ve all been busting our butts to get more listeners, get real advertisers, build a show that people want to listen to!
We appreciate everything you do, Rino. What you all do,” Japheth said, looking around the table, “but we’re not just over there with thumbs up our butts. ”
“Yes! This!” Alma poured Japheth more wine, he wasn’t sure he should indulge further. “This passion is what will save a business, save a town, save a marriage from getting frostbite.”
Leo turned back to Rino, “And then?”
“Emma-Lou ran after me, like Japheth said,” Rino confirmed.
“Down the elevator, out of the building. She wanted to talk more. I told her I had a meeting at Weinus, Weinus & Ware, that we would talk tomorrow. And then I left. I saw Japheth and his band at the law office. We signed the paperwork for the Kia Rios and then I left. I called Emma-Lou after because I felt bad about how we’d left it.
There was no answer. I honestly didn’t give it much thought.
I was looking forward to my date with Japheth, and I didn’t learn about the fire until later. I had no idea Emma-Lou was missing.”
He sat back, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness that looked strange on him, like it wasn’t a feeling he’d grown familiar with. “That’s all I know.”
“People might think… maybe the Ferraris…” Japheth began, then stopped, his courage petering out.
The table seemed to vibrate under his hands, like the ground in the early moments of an earthquake, still and yet not.
Everything he’d assumed about Rino’s involvement was suddenly emerging for reassessment.
“That we make people disappear?” Leo finished calmly.
He took a sip of wine, eyes never leaving Japheth’s.
“This is not a new story. My father heard it. I heard it. Now my children hear it. We are good Catholics. We give money to the church, to the Christian radio station. We sell cars. We shout a little. We have loud dinners. We are not saints, but we are not…” He made a small slicing motion with his hand. “Not that.”
“And the… cash?” Japheth asked, thinking of the body bags of money, the weird circular financial arrangements. “The… rotating donations in body bags?”
“Body bags!?” Eva startled, pushing back from the table in surprise.
“Not body bags. They’re hockey bags! It’s just a couple of old equipment bags I use to carry stuff around in.
Japheth and his friends had such a scared look on their face when they saw them, I thought it was funny.
They made some assumptions. I thought it was funny to pull their leg.
Maybe I pulled too hard and too long,” Rino explained, shaking his head.
“Rino! You mostriciattolo! And you wonder why people make up stories about us?” Alma threw crostini at her son.
Leo sighed, “We had made unusual arrangements, yes. Emma-Lou’s parents, they were not good with money.
They borrowed from everyone. They were drowning in debt.
We threw them a rope. And then another rope.
WWJD has been struggling for years. No one was advertising.
So, we advertised. And we donated. And then when that still wasn’t enough, a few loans.
They gave us IOU drafts. It was messy. But we did not wash money for the devil, eh?
We tried to keep a small, strange but important thing alive.
For the town, for our friends. And now, for you and your friends. ”
“Emma-Lou’s parents,” Alma added softly, “they were good people. When they disappeared on that cruise, we were as shocked as anyone. We wept. We sent flowers. We lit candles. We did not push them into the Bermuda Triangle or pull strings to vanish them like some kind of puppet masters.”
Rino looked at his hands and then up at Japheth, searching his face, begging to be believed, “If we were such monsters, would my family be coaxing you to test drive me? Wouldn’t it be easier to make sure you just crashed?”
“That’s… a fair point,” Japheth admitted faintly, again feeling ashamed for being so emboldened to make the accusations, even if they had been offered up as kindly as he could manage. “I’m sorry. I just had to know for sure.”
“So, people,” Eva said, swirling her wine, “they see an Italian family with money and think, ah, must be mafia. They don’t think about the long hours, hard work, or an over-caffeinated mother, and father and brothers who cannot sit down.
It’s easier to say, ‘they’re dangerous’ than to say, ‘they are trying.’”
“But then, and I’m sorry, I’m just trying to learn the truth, who burned WWJD and why?” Japheth whispered to himself as much as to all of them as he looked around the table, “Where’s Emma-Lou? If it wasn’t…”
Leonardo’s face closed slightly. “That is for the police to find out. And perhaps,” his gaze flicked to Rino, then back to Japheth, “for brave young men who are not afraid to ask hard questions. But if you are staying in this house, under our roof, you must know this–we do not hurt people we love.”
Alma reached across the table and put her hand over Japheth’s.
Her palm was warm, her grip strong from a lifetime of hard work.
“You are safe here, Japheth,” she said. “With us. With Rino. We are loud, we are nosy, we make too much food. We will serve you too much wine. But we are not dangerous. Dio mio. Look at this face.” She squeezed his chin lightly, “You think I would let anyone hurt you?”
Japheth’s eyes stung unexpectedly. He swallowed hard, fighting the urge to get so emotional on a first date.
He’d coasted into the evening expecting either romance or danger, maybe a little of both.
Instead, he’d found a family who were somehow both softer and sharper than the rumours suggested.
The sand under his feet hadn’t stopped shifting but it had formed into something that felt more like firm ground.
He looked over at Rino who met his gaze steadily, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“You don’t have to believe me,” he said.
“But I hope you will. Because despite you toeing over the line of good manners with my family, and despite you unwittingly or wittingly coaxing them on in never ending innuendo, and despite you professing to prefer public transit to my Maserati, I would like…” He hesitated, as if the words were heavier than he was used to lifting.
“I would very much like to keep seeing you. To take you on more dates that do not involve arson, or missing people, or lawyers or my parents. Maybe just gelato, next time.”
Japheth sat back in his seat and looked around the table. Trust, he realized, wasn’t always as clear as a lightning bolt or a choir of angels singing. It was more like stepping onto a rowboat that might or might not have a hole in it and saying, Okay. Let’s see how far we get.
“Okay,” he said slowly. “I believe you. Or I want to. Which is… something.”