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“Ahem.”
Michael and I turned at the sound of my brother’s voice, but my husband didn’t let me go. He didn’t have to anymore, and I could tell he was taking full advantage.
“Hey, Matt,” he said as he slid me in front of him, keeping his hands firmly at my waist. “What’s up, man?”
Matthew shifted uneasily from foot to foot and cleared his throat awkwardly. “I—sorry to interrupt.”
“It’s no problem,” I said but frowned when I caught his eyes glistening again. “What is it?”
“I—I didn’t have the guts to do this in front of everyone. Nonno would have wanted it that way. You remember he would have made a big speech congratulating you two and everything.” Matthew emitted a wry chuckle. “He liked you in the end, Mike. Told me that himself.”
Michael’s arms around me tightened. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s why…” Matthew shook his head, clearly overcome by emotion. “It’s why he told me that when he was gone, and if you ever got married, he wanted me to give you this. For the two of you.”
Tears welled up in my own eyes when I took the envelope Matthew was holding; our names scratched across the front. I’d thought I’d seen the last of Nonno’s familiar scrawl.
Michael’s arms remained strong around my waist as he set his chin on my shoulder. “Go on, Tess. Open it.”
So I did.
Inside the envelope were a bunch of documents, too many to look through at one time.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s the papers to the shop,” Matthew said. “He wanted you to have it. You and Mike.”
My eyes flew over the ownership papers, underneath them a copy of Nonno’s will clearly stating that when he died, the entirety of his estate would pass to his beloved wife, but for one exception: in the event of my marriage to one Michael Scarrone, Zola Auto and Drive would go to us as a wedding gift.
“I don’t think he imagined it would be this soon.” Matthew quirked a sardonic black brow. “Jesus, Le, you’re still a teenager, you know?”
I chuckled, then looked at Nonna, who was still wearing all black in honor of her husband, even while enjoying her third glass of wine. When Michael and I had told her that we wanted to get married only one year after we first met, I had expected more of an argument from her.
But to my surprise, she’d only said one thing: “When you know, you know.”
“So were they,” I said. “And they were the happiest couple in the world. When you know, you know.”
Michael’s laughter was a low rumble against my chest before he pressed a kiss to my cheek. “I always knew.”
I twisted to look at him. “Me too.”
Matthew watched our interaction, his eyes glazed a little at the memory of our grandfather. Out of all of us, he’d been taking the loss of Nonno the hardest. Had even taken to wearing Nonno’s old hats, as if they helped him live up to becoming the new man of the house. On top of that, he’d started attending Mass weekly beside Nonna, and I’d caught him saying his rosaries multiple times a week.
Survivor’s guilt was a powerful thing. I wondered if my poor brother would ever be able to shake it for good.
“But what about you?” I asked, suddenly aware that we were the only ones benefiting from the will. “Shouldn’t this belong to all six of us? I don’t want to take this away from you and the girls. Not to mention Nonna.”
But Matthew shook his head. “I won’t be around in another eighteen months. It wouldn’t make sense for me to take over just to leave again. And he made sure Nonna was taken care of.”
A shadow seemed to fall across the room. At Christmas, my brother announced his plans to join the Marines after he graduated from college and go to officer training. I didn’t know if it was a reaction to 9/11 or Nonno’s death a few weeks after, but his resolve was clear: he could do more with his life fighting for what was right than taking some white-collar job out of school.
The response hadn’t been great. Marie and Joni had immediately started crying after someone told them what the Marines were, Frankie ran upstairs and refused to come back down, Kate had started railing about the military industrial complex, and Nonna had shouted things in Italian that made all of our faces turn red.
In the end, it was Michael who returned Christmas morning to a state of relative calm. He had quickly and quietly ushered Matthew out of the house for a talk, man to man, asking Nonna and me to work on breakfast so that when they got back, everyone could eat and we could have this conversation without the added stress of empty stomachs.
When they came back, Matthew’s decision hadn’t changed, but I could tell he was taking the effect on us more seriously, which made the rest of us more willing to listen. It was the first time I saw Michael step into the role that I had a feeling Nonno had always seen. A quiet leader among men. Smart and capable. Someone we could all trust to come through in times of trouble.
I shook my head. I refused to let that particular raincloud ruin this day.
