AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I gazed up at Serafina’s statue. She’d endured a lifetime of setbacks and still managed to reinvent herself and find a new path in life. I’d had my share of pain, but nothing compared to hers. Maybe permanency was not the only metric of success. My marriage didn’t work out, but I got a wonderful daughter out of it. My restaurant was a great success, just not forever because forever is hard. Maybe I couldn’t do it all and be everything to everyone and that had to be OK. Like Giusy said, money could equal power and I would have plenty of it. I didn’t want power exactly, not like Giusy. I just wanted options. I wanted a chance to get back to the basics that I loved—a small butcher shop, a grill, setting my own hours so I could spend time with my daughter, no investors telling me to expand, to franchise. No fucking brunch. I was getting a do-over and I wouldn’t take it for granted.
“Nicolo, would you do something for me?” I rooted around in my backpack until I found what I was looking for.
“You are giving it back to me?” he asked as he gazed down at the portrait he had sketched of me.
“I was wondering if you could give it to Luca for me.”
“Of course,” he said. “I am sure he would appreciate it very much.” That sly smile returned before he leaned in to kiss me on both of my cheeks. As he hobbled back to his house, Carla put an arm around me and leaned her head on my shoulder.
“So Sicilian! I love a chatty old man first thing in the morning. Did he say anything interesting?”
“I’ll tell you on the plane. It’s a very long story.”
I reached into my duffel bag and pulled out one of the ziplock bags that I had divided Aunt Rose’s ashes into. I grasped a handful. I’d thought I would be squeamish about touching them, but there was nothing but love in my heart as the dust filled my hand. I gently scattered it into the fountain at Serafina’s feet.
“Sara! You can’t put them into a public fountain. What if it goes into the town’s water supply or something? Gross!”
“I doubt it does,” I said to my sister. Then with more authority, “Someone told me it flows out to the sea.” I had no idea if this was true, but it didn’t matter. A little dust wouldn’t hurt anyone and there was something wonderfully macabre and right about everyone in this town consuming a little bit of Rosie. I grabbed another handful and then another.
“Nicolo,” I called out before he reached his door. “Would you watch our bags for a little while? Could I leave them in your place?”
He nodded. I tossed our things through his massive door and grasped my sister’s hand as tightly as I could. When I led her through the streets to the dusty path up the mountain I was suddenly overcome with the urge to take Carla around the town, to show her its broken beauty, the narrow alleys, the imposing castle, the remnants of Greek and Roman and Saracen ruins. I wanted to make its charm and strangeness come alive for her. The idea of it made me smile so wide my cheeks actually hurt. Carla grinned back at me.
“I missed seeing you like this,” she said.
“I missed feeling like this. I have some things to show you.”
But first I wanted to fling the rest of Rosie’s ashes from the very top, right outside the cave where everyone believed Serafina perished, the same place where I almost lost my life, the place where Serafina found a way to start hers all over again.
Once we made it to the peak Carla stared out at the sweeping vista in awe. “Maybe we shouldn’t leave.”
“Oh, no. We can’t stay here,” I said. “But who knows, maybe we’ll come back someday.”
I took advantage of my sister admiring the view and stepped backward to the curved rock that formed the dragon’s ear. I leaned in and whispered.
“I’ve fucking got this.”
EPILOGUE
It was Cettina who reported my murder to the police, but the idea of staging my death belonged to both of us. We invented the plan late one night in the weeks after my Rosalia was born.
After I nearly died giving birth to my daughter my old friend did not leave my side. Cetti laid beside me in bed as I healed. She fed my child from a bottle when my milk did not come in and she nursed us both to good health. That was when we made the plans.
I could not go with the children to join Gio and I could not remain in Caltabellessa. We believed my husband would accept little Rosalia as his daughter if he had no way to question it. If I went with the children to America, he would always wonder, he would ask questions. His mother would pry, and I could not hide my secret forever. Without me there, with an orphaned daughter and a deceased wife, Gio would accept the story he was told and raise all my children. Rosalia would be his, the little girl he had always wanted.
We thought about how to do it, how I could disappear. We thought about Paola, how no one spoke about her any longer, how her life and death had simply been forgotten, erased. Pretending to end my life wasn’t an option though. I did not want to bring yet another sin to my family.
Someone had to hurt me.
Cetti volunteered to be the one who went to the police with the story about my body.
“They will either believe me that someone else murdered you or they will think that I killed you myself for being with my husband, and no one will blame me. They will dismiss it as a delitto d’onore, nothing more than an honor crime. Either way they will not question me,” she said practically and rationally.
“Cetti.” I reached for her.
“I love you. I have always loved you. My first word was your name. And I love my husband. I am happy that the two of you found so much in one another. I do not blame either of you. I have the life I want. I’m a mother to all those precious children. You never longed to be a mother and now you are so much more. Everyone got what they needed.”
A memory came into my mind, so clear and sharp it was like it happened that very morning and not decades earlier. The two of us ripping locks of hair from our heads, braiding them together and throwing them from Cetti’s roof into the wind to pledge ourselves to one another.
