“Saturn Girl!” Sofia cried.
“Saturn Girl,” Beatrice whispered.
Their eyes blew up wide.
“And we sent her flying over the balcony—” Sofia said.
Beatrice nodded. “And she landed—”
They turned and stared at Nico.
“Onyourbalcony … Spooky!” they said in unison.
This last word was expressed in a hushed and reverent tone as though there were unseen forces at work in an unseen world, and they had to be careful not to disturb any of it.
Isabella grinned. “Saturn Girl has the greatest telepathic powers of any of the superheroes.”
Oh, thought Nico,she’s a superhero.
“Yeah.” Beatrice nodded. “Telepathy.”
The girls stared at each other. “Spooky,” they said, once again, in unison.
“Saturn Girl beat Uncle Rocco at pool,” cried Sofia.
The girls began to giggle.
After that, Rocco’s grandfather grinned, nudging Rocco’s father. They began to chuckle until all of them were laughing.
Nico stood frozen, unsure how to respond.
“Tell me something, Nico,” said Rocco’s grandfather. “Did you cheat when you played pool? Did you play by the rules?”
“Yes,” Nico said, nodding. “I mean, I played by the rules. Whether I was playing poker or pool. I didn’t cheat. But I did lead people to think I wasn’t that good. Led them to believe they were going to win and coaxed them into betting large sums of money. That night, I purposely lost the games I played before the game with Rocco.”
“Who suggested you play for money?”
“I did. But not at first. We were just playing a game, and then Rocco suggested we make it interesting.”
She really had lost her edge. She could feel her cheeks burning. She knew full well what Rocco was planning on winning if she’d missed that final shot. If she’d known then what she knew now, she would have given it to him. Happily.
“And he threw that money on the table,” Rocco’s mother said, taking Nico’s hand. “You were just a child, dear. You were taken advantage of every bit as much as the people conned by the man and woman you called Uncle Jack and Aunt Milly.”
“More,” said his father.
“That’s right,” said his grandfather.
“But afterward,” Nico insisted, “with Mickey—”
His mother placed her hand on Nico’s cheek, shaking her head. “No, dear. You were still very young with no one to look out for you.”
“You may have done some things you’re not proud of,” his father said. “But that’s true of all of us. You did what you did to survive.”
“And as for what you did on your own,” his grandfather said, “it’s not the same at all. Not even if you did make like you weren’t so good at the poker and the pool. You won that money fair and square. Nothing wrong in that.”
His grandmother came up beside her, placing her hand on the other cheek. “That’s right. If those men couldn’t best you at either, then that’s on them. And that includes my own grandson. It’s also on them if they couldn’t resist your charms. They knew what they were doing. Including Rocco.”
That’s when the tears tumbled from her lashes down her cheeks while each and every one of them hugged her. She cried until finally, there were no tears left.
