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“Then she hasn’t left yet.”
“I don’t want to get her all upset. When she hears your voice she spends the rest of the day asking for you,” he said.
“Of course she does. I’m her mom and she shouldn’t have to ask to be with me.” Yes, I had agreed to let Jack stay at the house with our daughter all those months ago. But he had made the choice to try to keep me out of my daughter’s life. This was the first time I’d directly confronted him about our new custody situation and the conviction in my voice felt intoxicating. For the past few months I’d been too afraid, too convinced that he was right, that he was the more competent parent. But that was just Jack’s version of the story.
“Get my daughter, Jack.”
He put the phone down. I could hear Zelda’s nasally voice saying something about how they needed to get down to the lake. Jack snapped back at her and then Sophie’s singsong filled my ears.
“Mamma, I miss you so much. When do I see you?”
“So soon, honey. When I get back I’ll get up to the lake as quick as I can.”
“How long until you give me hugs and kisses?”
“Three or four days, baby.”
“Then you can see my new unicorn floaty and I can show you how it helps me swim? I named him Travis.”
“I’ll see it soon, baby.”
“OK! GOOD! Loveyoubye.” My heart melted into my stomach as the line went dead.
I was in bed by the time I realized that I hadn’t called my sister back. My exhaustion was too overwhelming to go downstairs where I would have service. I stared up at the mural on the ceiling, the orgy of fantastical beasts sneering down at me, and slipped into the deepest sleep of my life.
—
Someone was staring at me. I knew it before I even opened my eyes. I could feel their gaze on my skin, and yet, for a few moments, I stayed curled on my side with my eyelids shut, willing this to be a strange dream that would disappear the moment I acknowledged its existence. Then I felt the tip of a blade dig into my lower back, right above my tailbone, into the space between my sacrum and my spine.
“Get up.”
Of course I recognized the voice. Did I really believe this would all end so easily? His belt buckle gleamed in the sliver of light from the bathroom. I rolled away from Nino to the other side of the bed. He yanked me across the sheets by my biceps.
“Get your hands off me,” I managed, though the knife was now pointing at my lower abdomen, directly in front of my left colic artery, the one that could cause a pig to bleed out in less than a minute. “I’ll scream. Giusy will hear me.”
“Who do you think let us in?” His teeth gleamed as brightly as his belt.
They dragged me down the stairs and threw me in the back seat of a car parked on the narrow street in front of the hotel. A cloud passed over the moon and there were no lights on the street so I didn’t recognize it right away, but once the engine revved up I saw that the windows were missing. It was Luca’s Alfa Romeo. Giusy helped these men take me from her hotel and they were driving me away in Luca’s car. I should have listened when I was told to trust no one.
TWENTY-TWO
SERAFINA
1925
I felt like I was going mad. Most nights when I couldn’t sleep, I walked the streets to try to calm my blood. My strange wanderings only lent credibility to the rumors about me.
When I finally fell into a tortured rest there was nothing but pain. In my dreams Gio beat me, Marco drowned me in a boiling bath. These men who once loved me wanted nothing more than my destruction.
Each morning I woke with a jolt, certain that disaster was imminent.
I thought about ending my pregnancy nearly every day. But I delayed and delayed. I still worried Marco would take another turn for the worse, and for that reason, and many more, I needed to keep his child alive even if it meant terrible things for me. For us.
I did not have to tell anyone for many months. My symptoms were few and the ones I experienced were easy to hide.
Gio had set sail the day after I’d returned from Palermo. When he woke the next morning the demons of drink had left him, and I was unsure how much he even remembered of the night before. He was apologetic but still skeptical of me. He met with the notaio to find out how much our home in town was worth and whether there might be any willing buyers.
It was our luck that the official knew of a man who planned to return from America in just under a year who was looking for a home for the family he had started across the ocean with an Irishwoman he met in a place called Philadelphia. This raised Gio’s spirits and he treated me kindly until he left for the docks in Palermo.
