Chapter 42
LORENZO
It feels good to get behind the wheel of a car again.
The blood-red Ferrari drives at the speed of light. With the top down, the warm, pine-scented air hits my face in the most pleasant way possible.
Emily sits beside me, her auburn hair pinned up under a scarf that snaps and ripples at its loose edges.
She turns to me every so often and smiles. She’s clearly enjoying all ‘the feels’ of driving fast down a deserted road in the sunshine.
“You drive like some Formula 1 rock god,” says Emily, raising her voice over the wind. A loose end of her scarf snaps against her cheek.
“And I fuck like one too,” I say, pressing on the gas.
Emily flushes and says nothing. Yet I know her well enough to guess she’s tingling all over with the need to release.
I ache to reach over and put my right hand right in her pussy.
Yet given my own hard-on and the excessive speed of this car, it would lead to a tail-spin direct to heaven.
Or hell.
It’s good to see prim, Bostonian Emily with the French twist and occasional disapproving scowl loosen up like this.
In that first photo Dante showed me of her, no one would ever guess that Boston bluestocking could lose her shit over a “bad boy” like me.
But she’s proven it more than once.
But when I’m hitting nearly ninety miles an hour, any sex talk can lead to unwanted consequences.
“Your scarf makes you look like a gun moll. The Bonnie to my Clyde in the 1930s.”
“Who are they?”
“One of the original gangster couples. Romantic and tragic.”
Emily laughs and turns her attention to the passing landscape.
I love seeing her like this. Joyful. Carefree. Unguarded.
Em puts her hand over mine on the stick shift.
Em.
That’s how I like to think of her now.
Just plain Em.
A short name of endearment. A burning ember. Every time I look at her, I feel her heat.
“Hey, look at that fruit seller,” Em says. “Can we stop for fresh cherries?”
I swerve off the side of the road, a blur of red.
The old guy behind the upturned crate is with a young kid, maybe his grandson. The kid tries to upsell us on alcohol-free homemade fruit wine in addition to the cherries.
“For an extra five bucks, you can take a look at our goats. We have a few of their kids that are as cute as heck.”
“Let’s see them, Lorenzo,” Em says.
Though I’d rather be back on the road, we find a low bale of hay and take seats by the baby goats.
“It’s nice here,” says Em, after I’ve poured out the wine and divided the cherries. “I wish we could have brought Teddy here.”
“Another time. It was all I could do to get permission to see him on such short notice.”
Em smiles and puts her hand on my thigh. “Thanks for arranging this. It seems like forever since I’ve seen him last.”
“On the phone last night, I overheard him call you MiMi. How is that?”
“Oh,” says Em, blushing. “There’s only seven years between us. But since he was only a year old when our parents were killed, he started calling me ‘Mama.’ “
She pauses.
“Since I was only eight at the time, all the mothers at the playground would stare. So I trained him to call me Mimi instead.”
“That must have been rough,” I say, taking her hand and feeling each of her fingers in turn. “Being a child, but having no childhood.”
“I don’t know about that,” she says. “I had good times with my parents when they were alive. Mom took me to ballet class like other parents. Dad was always busy at the restaurant. What about you?”
“Similar. Except my dad was always ‘at work.’ When I was a little kid, Mom dragged me to the libraries for story hour. Karate class. Like most kids.”
“When did you find out your dad was head of the mafia?”
I shrug. “I knew it all along. It was just how I grew up,” I say, a flood of images hitting me at once.
My mother’s long, lingering illness and eventual death.
Becoming a ‘Made Man’ by putting a bullet in a man’s head.
Em doesn’t have to know any of that.
“Come on,” I say, helping her off the hay stack. “Let’s go and see Teddy.
After a few hours of driving and classic tunes, we’re at her brother’s school in the Berkshires.
Stone walls run the length of the property.
Beyond the golden iron gate, a wide gravel path leads up to a building that looks more like a country estate than a school.
It looks just the way Emily described it. All red brick and stately white columns. The kind of place that has a name instead of an address.
“Are you excited to see your brother?”
“I can’t wait,” she says, practically vibrating with excitement.
“The headmaster arranged for one of the meeting rooms they use for parent-child reunions. A guide should meet us at the front of the school.”
When Emily beams at me in gratitude, I can see I made the right move.
The guide, a too-chipper twelfth-grader, waits for us.
She shows us around the estate with so much pride I find myself wishing Dad had sent us brothers here.
Once we’re shown into the meeting room, the girl leaves. Em and I fall into a comfortable silence.
As we wait in the silent room, I wonder what the kid looks like. A replica of Em?
Possibly. Then there’s the 7-year age gap.
The question is answered for me when the door opens and her brother steps in. He has neatly combed hair the exact color of Emily’s. He wears a navy blue suit like the guide’s, and a quiet attitude.
As soon as he sees his sister, he shoots into her arms.
“Mimi! I missed you so much!” the kid says.
I smile, remember what Em said about Teddy’s first words.
“Teddy, say hello to Mr. Ricci.”
I shoot a questioning look at Em. Mr. Ricci?
“Hi there, Teddy. How you doing?”
He clears his throat. “I’m 12 now, sir. My given name is Theodore.’”
“What about calling my friend ‘Uncle Lorenzo,” Emily says to her brother. “Mr. Ricci is a very close friend of mine.”
“Ok,” says the kid, tensing up. I gather he doesn’t like a stranger to interrupt his precious time with his sister.
“How about we all go for an ice cream,” I say, breaking the silence. It’s near the school gates.”
“Yes, please,” he says.
As soon as Teddy has his ice cream in hand, his initial frosty demeanor toward me thaws.
At least a little.
Teddy and Emily can’t stop talking. They barely pay me any notice.
When we get to the end of our time together, I take the gift from my pocket.
“Do you have a keychain?” I ask him.
“No. I only have one key.”
“Well, that’s a start,” I say, giving him the gift. “Open it.”
Emily and I watch as he opens it. A smile lights up on his face when he sees the sparkling gold chain with Em’s picture on it.
“Cool!”
“Now when you use it, you can think of your sister and this day. Be certain to keep it with you always. Like in your pocket.”
“Thank you,” he says, looking up at us solemnly. “I will.”
Yet I’m a little relieved when we drop Teddy back off at the school.
Emily gives him a final embrace, then turns back to me once he’s gone.
Tears moisten her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” I say.
She shakes her head.
“It’s just so difficult,” she says. “It’s always been difficult being away from him. But now, with the future so uncertain …”
“Your uncle, you mean?”
“Yes. And who knows what’s going to happen next year with his tuition?”
That hits me hard. My automatic response is to tell her not to worry about it. That I’ll pay it without a second thought.
I automatically reach out to comfort her. Tell her it will all be taken care of. But I stop short of making that commitment.
Go slow, Lorenzo, my brother Dante had warned. Max, too, when he realized that this was beyond a game.
They could be right. Best to keep my cards in hand.
“Come on. Let’s see if this historic Berkshires Inn looks as good as the pictures.”
Once we arrive on the grounds of The Berkshires Inn, Em claps her hands in glee.
“Oh, my gosh. It looks just like Manderley.”
“What’s that?”
“A mansion in this old film called Rebecca.”
“Is it Romantic?” I ask, helping Em out of the car.
“Yes. Very. Well, I think so at least.”
“Good. Then we’re certain to enjoy a very good time.”