Page 115 of Pretty Lies

It was still a beautiful day to do it.

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“You’ll miss him the most when you least expect it,” came a soft voice from Della’s left.

Though she’d prepared mentally as much as possible for the moment when her brother’s casket would be lowered into the ground, she’d not actually been ready when it finally happened. She dared to glance away from the hole dug in dirt, but was grateful for the large rim of her hat and the birdcage veil that kept her face hidden from the crowd. Or rather, what was left of it.

A few feet away, her parents accepted hugs from friends. The priest chatted with those that remained near her brother’s headstone that had only been finished the night before and placed just that morning. White lilies covered the ground and the casket that now rested at the bottom of the hole.

“Why is that?” Della asked.

Cory’s mother came to stand a little closer to her side, but Lily Rossi didn’t offer any other sense of comfort. No hug or even a pat to the back. Della was grateful because frankly, she’d hugged and said thank you to more people than she cared to admit that day.

“When I lost one of my older brothers as a young woman,” Lily said with a quiet sigh, “I was just starting out in my adult life, really. It hurt when I buried him. Still kills me to see his name carved into marble when I visit. But it hurt worse when time passed, and I realized how much they were missing. Dino would have loved Joe—that kid reminded me so much of him. All the worry Cory put us through while he grew up, Dino would have laughed and said that was just the DeLuca side of him coming out. He wouldn’t be wrong. But that’s when it hurt the most.”

“And nothing makes it better or easier, I imagine.”

Lily glanced over at Della, and for the first time that day, she allowed someone to look her straight in the face and see the tears she kept hiding. “No—but better I tell you now and you expect the pain to come than to stumble into it over and over again the way I did. My son thinks you’re a very special young woman, Della.”

“So he keeps telling me.”

“I hate seeing the past repeat itself.”

“Or is it just the life we chose?” Della asked back.

Lily considered that, her attention turning back on the grave. “Does it make a difference if the end result is still the same? It all comes full circle. One way or another. I’ll see you at the Trentini mansion later for dinner, hmm? We’ll talk more. Someone’s coming this way, and if you hadn’t noticed, he didn’t want to leave your side at all earlier.”

From the right, Della watched Cory approach.

White lily in hand.

“Did you find your brother?” Lily asked her son.

He reached for his mother and gave her a kiss on the cheek before taking the spot at Della’s right. “I did, Ma. Dad’s waiting with the car.”

“Perfect. Della, I’m sorry.”

She gave Cory’s mother a smile. Thank you wasn’t appropriate. She bet Lily knew that better than anyone. “I know.”

Cory’s arm found Della’s waist, and her head laid against his bicep. It wasn’t lost on her how he wore a three-piece suit and leather loafers instead of his usual leather, jeans and boots. She wanted to admire him looking like sin poured into a suit with his hair slicked back, and a single cross stud in his earlobe. Even his nose ring had been changed to be the same silver as the stud in his ear.

He held out the lily for her to take.

“I saved one extra,” he said. “From the splash over the casket.”

She took it with trembling fingers.

“Take it home,” Cory told her, bending down to press a kiss against the top of her head. She closed her eyes, and a tear escaped. Before she’d even blinked, his hand slipped up under her veil to wipe the tear away with the pad of his thumb. He never even smudged her makeup. She grabbed his wrist and kissed the tip of the digit, her silent thanks. “Put the lily in water, and I’ll make sure you never see it wilt.”

Della smiled a bit. “How?”

“Magic.”

“Do you mean to say you’ll always replace it so I never have to?”

Cory shrugged and stared out over the grave and beyond the small hill to where rows and rows of cars were parked in the church’s lot. “Maybe, or maybe it’s just like I said.”

“Right, magic.”