“It sounds like you handled it better than a lot of parents would have in that situation. Sometimes, we tend to jump to assuring kids that they’re okay. When they’re clearly not. And that’s invalidating.” She paused, running her fingertip over the lip of her coffee mug. “Though I hate how some of that advice came from personal experience.”
“We went through a lot.” I shrugged it off.
“You went through a lot more.”
“Ez, you had to marry that son of a bitch and be abused by him…”
“I meant when we were kids still. I was an adult then. Barely, but an adult. You went through a lot more as a kid. And don’t think I don’t know how much you’ve edited what went on when Iwasn’t around anymore. Because I knew those guys. I knew how they were.”
“There might have been more propositions and groping than I’ve mentioned before.” Ezmeray’s face hardened. “But it never went, you know, too far.”
“That was already too far. You were a child.”
“There’s no reason to be upset about it now. They’re dead.”
“But they didn’t die painfully enough, now that I know that.”
“It was more important to be free than to get revenge.”
“I guess. I still hate that I couldn’t protect you.”
“That goes both ways.”
She nodded.
We’d both been through a lot.
We both would have liked to protect each other. And our mother. But we were young girls stuck in a group of men’s sticky web.
“Doesn’t this seem like a long walk for little Tuna?” Ezmeray said when she glanced at the clock.
“Oh, please. This isn’t a dog walk. This is a super-secret mafia meeting that they aren’t letting us be a part of.”
“You’re probably right,” she said, then shook her head. “Now, I’m wondering how many of these long walks Brio has taken the dogs on have been meetings.”
“Knowing this Family, most of them.”
“I wonder what he would do if I offered to do the walks.”
“Likely tell you it wasn’t safe.”
“These Costa men,” she said, shaking her head. “Speaking of.”
“Oh, do we have more dirt?”
“Maybe, but you’re the one who has it.”
“What?”
“What’s going on with you and Christopher?”
“What? Nothing.” That came out too fast, too pitchy. Even as my mind flashed with memories of him behind me in bed, his hand between my thighs, his hard length against me.
“Oh, please. You’re staying at his apartment to recover.”
“He offered.”
“So did Brio.”
