Page 9 of Virago

Gia had felt responsible for Bo as long as she could remember. They were only a couple years apart in age, and his differences had become apparent when they were both little kids. Then Dad went to prison and Mom was alone with them both, and she’d enlisted Gia to help her keep Bo and his tender ways safe from the things that could hurt him. She had taken that duty into the deepest part of her psyche and formed her whole life around standing between Bo and all he could not understand, all that would not understand him.

To this day, Gia felt her bond with her brother as a durable, elastic, invisible cord between them. Sometimes it was a lifeline, sometimes a leash, occasionally a noose. As far away as Evanston, Illinois, she’d felt its pull.

Holding him now, squeezed so tightly her ribs ached, there was slack in that cord she hadn’t felt in months, and she sighed with relief.

When Bo was ready for the hug to end, he backed abruptly away. Mom and Dad stood a few feet behind him, their similar expressions showing how moved they were by that hug.

Bo didn’t notice them. “If you give me your keys, I’ll get your things and bring them in.”

“Sure. Thanks!” Gia handed over her keys, and Bo and Otto walked away, headed toward Cammy.

“There’s my baby girl,” Dad said and swooped in for his own hug. For a second, Gia thought he’d lift her off her feet and swing her around like he used to do, she felt him shift like he meant to take her weight, but it didn’t happen. That was a relief. She’d loved that so much as a girl, but Dad’s back wasn’t good. He’d been paralyzed from the chest down for more than a year when she was a toddler, and he’d fought hard to regain feeling and movement in his body. As he got older, he had more pain. She didn’t ever want to be the reason he was hurt.

“Hi, Daddy,” she said and tucked her head against his throat, breathed in the scent of him, felt the brush of his long, grey braid over her arms.

“It’s good to have you home, squirt,” he said as he released her. “You look good.”

“I feel good. I’m glad to be home, too.”

“And you’re gonna stay awhile this time?”

“The summer, at least. Probably longer than that. I’ll need to travel to get my research done, but I’m still figuring all that out.”

“Well, I hope you put down some roots here again.” He glanced back at Mom, and when he looked at Gia again, his lopsided smirk had the shape of a secret.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothin’. I’m gonna help Bo bring your shit in.”

With that, he walked off toward her car, and Gia and her mother were alone, face to face.

Gia adored her mother. She knew her mother loved her the same. But she hated the way tension flared between them—sometimes hot and quick and sometimes simmering and enduring. Lilli Lunden showed her love readily and enthusiastically, but she was not a soft, sweet, greeting-card kind of mom. She was tough, by most definitions of the word. She had survived impossible challenges and achieved impossible successes, and she couldn’t help but see the world through the lens of her experiences. She therefore had high expectations and firm boundaries.

Gia never felt like she could quite reach the heights her mother thought she could.

Mom spoke first now. “Hi, cara.”

Mom’s heritage was fully Italian, she’d been raised bilingual (and now was a true polyglot), and she said her sweetest words in that language. Gia really wanted to learn Italian, too, and she’d dabbled with it in Duolingo, but the thought that she’d not be able to become as fluent as her mother in a language of her heritage had kept her from getting serious about it.

“Hi, Mom. Missed you.”

Mom smiled and held out her arms. “C’mere, love. I missed you so much.”

Gia dived in for another hug so tight she felt reshaped. Her mother’s love sank into her bones.

God, she loved home.

~oOo~

As Mom stepped back and took Gia’s hand, turning to lead her toward the house, Bo and Dad passed them by, each carrying a full load of her things. Bo had both her boxes of her dissertation research in his arms and her backpack on his back; Dad had her laundry duffel and her two biggest suitcases.

Gia pulled on her mom’s hand. “Hold up. Let’s go back to Cammy and grab the rest of my stuff.” The boys had the heaviest cargo; she and her mom could easily collect what was left.

But Mom, wearing an enigmatic smile, shook her head. “Not yet. Let’s follow the boys.”

“Okay ...” Normally, Gia would ignore that and go do what she wanted, leaving her mother behind, but she was feeling too full of homecoming’s warm fuzzies to resist the pull of Mom’s hand around hers. So she nodded, and they headed toward the house, about thirty feet behind Dad and Bo.

Then the boys walked straight past the front porch steps.

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