Neither of them spoke for a long moment as Francesca cleaned her. Something inside Kara fractured at the woman’sgentle, motherly care. By the time Francesca was helping her dry her hands, Kara was crying, her eyes full of big fat, detestable tears.
“Ohbambina,” she soothed as she pulled Kara to hug. “It’s okay... it’s okay.”
The stress and fear of the attack, the fear she felt for Angelo, and the sight of all that blood was simply too much for her at the moment. A man could die because of her. A man who’d only ever been kind to everyone.
Francesca held her for a long while until the sobs subsided.
“Feel better?” Francesca asked.
Kara nodded, feeling like a silly child as she rubbed her hands against her eyes and cheeks to wipe away her tears.
“This is scary for all of us,” Francesca said. “You love my son, and you watched him get hurt. That must have been terrifying.” Francesca brushed a hand over Kara’s wild red hair. “But Angelo is stubborn. All my boys are. He’ll be fine. You’ll see.”
“He has more than one brother?” She regretted the question the moment she asked it. Angelo’s fiancée should know how many brothers he had.
“Yes, of course! He has three.” Francesca laughed. “He didn’t tell you about us?”
Kara struggled to cover her tracks. “He mentioned he had brothers, just not how many… I’m so sorry I didn’t know.”
“You and Angelo have been dating a long time?”
She shook her head. “Not long… only two months.” The lies continued. “That’s why the engagement was still unofficial. We were mostly just talking about it. We hadn’t made any concrete plans yet.”
Francesca suddenly chuckled. “That boy. He was teasing me tonight about having a girlfriend. I assumed that he was joking because he said, ‘You can be a very intimidating mother.’”
For a moment Kara panicked. Did Angelo actually have a girlfriend? Or had he just been teasing his mother? She had no way to know.
Francesca sniffled still apparently lost in her memories of a conversation from earlier that night. “I said to him ‘I am not,’ but… I am, I know. But I won’t be to you ever, mybambina. You are Angelo’s, and now you are mine too.” She squeezed Kara in a hug that warmed up so much of her cold, shivering heart.
Oh God, she’d missed this so much. A hug from a mother. Being someone’s child.
“You’ve had a long day. It’s all right.” Francesca rubbed Kara’s arms, as though trying to warm her up. “You’ll have plenty of time to learn all about us later. We should get back to the waiting room.”
The bathroom door opened, and Alessia came inside, holding a big green sweater, a lot like the one Kara was wearing.
“Thank you, you angel.” Francesca kissed her daughter-in-law’s cheek.
Alessia held out the sweater to Kara. “I think we have the same sweater, might even been the same size.”
Kara’s fingers closed around the fabric as she shyly thanked Angelo’s sister-in-law. She changed in one of the stalls and Francesca put her blood soaked sweater into a large shoulder bag.
“I’ll find a way to get the stains out,” Angelo’s mother promised her.
They returned to the waiting room where Kara fell into a chair beside Dante and Alessia and fell almost immediately asleep.
When she woke, she blinked, her body stiff and tired as she glanced at the waiting room clock.
Midnight. It had been four hours since Angelo had been stabbed, but somehow it felt more like four days.
“Feel better?” Alessia asked her.
“I can’t believe I fell asleep.”
“It’s the adrenaline,” Alessia explained. “It finally wore off and you crashed.”
“Did I miss anything? Did the doctors come out or…”
“No, not yet,” the other woman said.
