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He jerked his gaze to Yaya’s, a quizzical expression on his brow. “We all are.”
She was impatient though, an impatience for only the truth, born of age. “Come on, Rafaello. You know what I mean.” She sighed. “I’m not planning on going anywhere,” she said gently. “But nor will I be here forever.”
Her frankness shifted something deep inside him. He ignored her words, and their depressing sentiment. “Come on, Yaya, there’s no need for this.”
“There is,” she insisted. “I’m worried about you.”
He frowned. “What the he—for?” He cut the curse off swiftly, remembering Yaya’s dislike for language.
“Of all my grandsons, you were the one most devastated by the move.”
His heart thundered, her words invoking an ancient pain. “What move?” He said, though, not wanting to discuss it.
She didn’t play that game. “You used to cry, every night. Do you remember?”
Fragments, like broken shards of glass. He remembered her arms though, wrapping around him in the darkness of midnight, keeping the shadows at bay, breathing warmth back into his soul.
“It was a long time ago.” He moved a piece then realised it was a silly mistake. He ground his teeth together, straightening his spine.
“Not so long. It feels like yesterday. Six little boys all heart-sore and teary,” she shook her head. “I knew we had to do it, to keep you here, but there were many days I wondered if we had any clue what we were getting ourselves into.”
“You did the right thing.” He swallowed past the emotions that lodged in his throat. “I was so young, but my earliest memories are – not good. I can only imagine what life would have been like if we’d stayed with our parents.”
A sheen of tears filmed her eyes and he regretted that. He wracked his brain for a conversation change and came up blank. Yaya, in any event, wasn’t prepared to let it go.
“You were heartbroken and I didn’t know how to make you better. Strawberries helped,” she smiled fondly.
He matched it, but his heart was strangely heavy.
“You’re wrong,” he said quietly.
“Am I?”
“On two scores.”
Her frail fingers moved a piece, capitalising on his mistake.
“You knew exactly how to make me better.” He hoped she could understand what her comfort had meant to him; how much it had helped. “And there was no single one of us more affected by our parents’ failings than the other. It was devastating to each of us, in different ways. But don’t you think, for one moment, we are not grateful every day of our lives that you and Gianfelice brought us here. Don’t you ever doubt how much we love you.”
She was fighting tears. He reached across and ran the back of his hand over her cheek.
“You were so good to us.”
She shook her head.
“I always hoped I was what you needed.”
He nodded.
“But Raf,” more urgency. “You are alone. You fly around and you do your adventures but all these years I have never heard of you falling in love, letting your heart know what that pleasure is. You are like a flame in the breeze, bright and warm but always going away again.”
He ignored the analogy and her sentiment. “I’m my own person.”
“Are you? Sometimes I wonder if you’re not too much the person your parents created.”
He stared at her, the question intriguing.
“You were only two, but they broke your heart, of that I have no doubt. Maybe you want it to stay broken forever?”
