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Chapter Two
- Noemi -
IWAS WALKING RIGHTback into the situation I had run from five years ago. I tried not to think about it as I walked around the living room, pulling off sheets and choking on the dust that wafted up from the stale linens. My brother Willis, who technically owned our old home on Penderbrook Lane, told me he’d have a cleaning crew come around to take care of it, but I was too anxious to get back home. Oh, I’d let him send people to do the bulk of the work, but I could at least get the living room, kitchen, and my bedroom andensuitecleaned up enough to move back in.
I sighed as I looked around the pale blue living room with its bay windows, stone fireplace, and solid oak flooring. It hadn’t changed in five years, and why would it when no one had lived there full-time for almost the last nine years? When I went away to college, Willis came home occasionally, but he was busy with his political career. Each year, he came home less and less until finally, he decided to close it up. He thought about selling it, he said, but he wanted me to have a place to come home to.
Until now, home had been college dorms then, the flat I shared with my roommates in London. I had wanted out of that two-story colonial as quickly as possible. There were too many memories. It was our family home before my parents were killed in a drunk driving accident. An accident caused by my mother. I don’t know what happened, how or why they were both too intoxicated to drive. My mother took the wheel anyway. I still missed them. Coming home made me face the memories that I hadn’t been strong enough to live with.
I ran my hand through the dust on the mantle which proudly displayed my and Willis’ high school graduation photos. It was bittersweet to see them there. One week after my June graduation, we buried our parents.
I’m not going to dwell on it, I told myself. I didn’t come back here to relive the past but to move on from it.
But why here? I could have gone anywhere. I finished my temporary archivist position with the Ravenspur estate in England then I started looking for something permanent. No more temporary jobs for Noemi Petrafuso. I was tired of running. My heart wanted me to come home. I missed the leaves in autumn, the crisp winter air. I missed the bannister I used to slide down when I was a kid.
I missed my brother.
I also missed my best friend. The Calegari family bought the house next door when I was in the sixth grade. The Calegari house was twice the size of ours, not as old, but more... more columns, more rooms, more windows, more marble, more wood floors, and just so much more.
There was only one girl in the family. Lilly and I immediately became best friends the day I stood at my bedroom window and waved at her through the glass. She waved back, gesturing for me to come down. I did and we were inseparable ever since.
I’m not sure why we became so close and stayed that way. She was a fun-loving Italian princess and I was the shy, quiet girl-next-door. We were almost exact opposites, but we had enough in common to foster a friendship that lasted to this day. We went to college together as well, though Lilly stayed at home and I moved into a dorm. The house weighed heavily on me and leaving was the best way I knew to deal with my parents' deaths.
That was one thing that Lilly and I bonded over.
Our tragedies may have been almost a decade apart, but we both knew what it was like to lose a parent. In fact, Lilly had watched her father get murdered. He was reluctant, she told me, but he had promised to take her out for ice cream if she got good grades on her report card. He put her off for weeks, but that night, she begged him to take her. Eventually, he gave in. They were walking back to the car after having banana splits when Lilly realized she’d left her new purse on the chair in the booth. She ran to get it and was coming back to the car when she heard the gunfire and saw her father fall to the ground.
I think there was more to the story, but she never talked about it again and I respected her privacy. Over the years, we spent hours talking about our feelings, what it was like to lose a parent, how to cope with loss. I spent more than one Friday night crying on her shoulder, but she only discussed the details of her father’s death one time and that was the night my parents didn’t come home.
We were having a sleepover at her house, still giddy and high from our graduation the day before. We were ready to kick off what we wanted to be our most fabulous summer yet. Epic. Unforgettable. It was unforgettable alright.
Willis got the call first and drove straight home from NYC.
He didn’t call me before showing up at the Calegari house. I always wondered why he didn’t call. Lilly said it was probably because he didn’t want to tell me over the phone. But it was such a long drive from New York to our home in Connecticut. It bothered me to this day to think of him making that drive alone, dealing with his grief... alone. Willis was like that. He was a great brother. He took care of me after my parents died. Was always there for me. It bothered me that on that night, he bore the burden of our loss for hours before he reached me.
Lilly and I were hanging out in her room. PJ’s on. Popcorn, soda, and pizza at the ready. Mrs. Calegari was home. So were Lilly’s older brothers. They gave us our space, as they always did. We were watching our favorite television show, and just as a vampire’s head was about to be cut off, someone knocked on Lilly’s door.
Lilly’s brother Gabriel was standing on the other side when she opened it. Gabriel was... well, hot. Everyone thought so. While I tended to keep my opinion on the matter to myself, there was no denying that Gabriel’s dark eyes begged you to stare into his, and his hard muscles wanted you to run your hands over his olive skin and find out if that hardness had any softness to it at all.
“Have you come to crash our sleepover?” Lilly accused. “Because if you have...” Her voice trailed off in an eerie silence.
I peeked around her shoulder. Gabriel was as solemn as I’d ever seen him. We’d gotten to be friends ourselves over the years and the stony man standing before me wasn’t the Gabriel I knew.
He looked me in the eye. “You two put some clothes on. Noemi, there’s someone downstairs who needs to see you.”
He didn’t say anything else but shut the door and left us wondering what the heck was going on. We exchanged glances and hurried to do as he said. I threw on a tee shirt and jeans while Lilly put on some designer sweats. The kind with glittery words like ‘luscious’ and ‘cherry’ across the backside.
We took the backstairs quickly and almost ran to the kitchen. When we came around the corner, I saw Willis standing by the sink. He had a glass of some brown liquid in his hand, but he wasn’t drinking it. He was staring into the glass and he looked awful. Messed up, blood-shot eyed awful.
“Hey, Noe,” he croaked.
“Hi,” I whispered.
Something was wrong. The tension in the air was as thick as London fog. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gabriel grab Lilly’s elbow and try to pull her from the room.
She protested and part of me appreciated that. She wanted to stay. Something about the tired, doomed look on Willis’ face told me that Ineededher to stay.
“Let them talk,” Gabriel urged Lilly as she tried to pull away from him.
