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“Here you go.” I set the tray down on the bed beside her, helping her to sit up to eat. I sink down onto the bed beside her.
She takes a delicate bite of the bread. “Perfect. Thank you.”
“Nonna, I got a job today.”
Her graying brow furrows. “Don’t you have a job?”
“Yes, but working at the drugstore doesn’t pay as well as this new thing I’ve found.” I finger the soft petals of a wild orange lily. My stomach flips with nerves, wondering how much to tell her.
I don’t want her to worry.
“But the pharmacy is dependable, no? You’re the third generation of Barone women to work there. Your mother and I got by on what we made there.” She gestures to her tray. “Look! We eat like royalty around here. We’re doing just fine.”
“Yes. You’re right. It’s dependable.” My legacy… to work at the corner pharmacy in town, in walking distance from our tiny yellow cottage my grandmother was born in. “But I found a better one.”
Her brow now knits with clear disapproval. “Where is this wonderful new job?” She runs the tines of her fork around the plate, collecting sugar crystals on her bread.
“It’s as a housekeeper. For a very wealthy family.” Prickles dance down the back of my neck as I get closer to revealing the name of my new boss.
“For who?” She eyes me, still not convinced I should quit the pharmacy.
A tightness forms in my throat and I clear it away. I hold her gaze. “The Accardis.”
A look I can’t quite read passes over her lined face. “Hmm… the Accardis. You say they are paying you well?”
“Yes. Why?”
She gives a shrug of her thin shoulders. “I thought they were broke. Spent up all their mom’s money after she passed. Beautiful Bella. Those boys were lost after she passed.”
A silence stretches between us as we think of my own absent mother. I can’t help the guilt I feel. I know it’s irrational, but the backs of my eyes burn with unshed tears when I think of her.
I blink them away. “Yes. But the Accardis have come into a new fortune. Apparently, they’ve got some new business deal. Pretty lucrative, from what I’ve heard.”
Nonna makes the sound she makes when she disapproves of something. “Hmph.” She shakes her head. “More like that generous dowry they got when they arranged for their daughter Emilia to marry one of those Bachman boys.”
“The Bachmans are quickly becoming the most powerful family in Italy. Only my grandmother has the balls to call the men of the Bachman brotherhood ‘boys,’” I laugh. “And I don’t care where the Accardis get their money, as long as some of it gets into our pockets.”
Nonna eyes me. “Well, you’ve got balls too and you know who you get them from. Now, are you going to tell me why you need more money? Do we have some bills I don’t know about?”
I think of the threatening note, the cat in the bushes I thought was a dangerous man, and shake my head. “Nothing to worry about. Just wanting, you know, some nicer things for us.” I kiss her cheek, clearing the tray from her lap.
In the kitchen, I rinse the wine from my mother’s china plate.
How do I tell Nonna that my uncle, her beloved son, my mother’s only sibling, has stolen from the wrong men? She still thinks of Marco, now a middle-aged man, as her baby, buying the lie he sold her years ago that he’s off traveling the world. In reality, he’s most likely passed out behind the train tracks on the outskirts of the village, out of his mind from the drugs he bought from the Meralo clan.
Boughtbeing an exaggeration.
The Meralos gave my uncle Marco an advance on his drugs, then a second, then a third. Their business is dirty: get someone hooked on their goods, feed them more and more until the buyer is in over their heads and then go to the family to collect the debt.
Marco owes them a lot of money. Money the Meralos have come to me to repay. They know I don’t have the money and there’s only one thing they are willing to take to clear the debt. I can’t tell my grandmother the truth, it would break her heart. So I let her think Marco is still traveling the world.
And I hope to God she doesn’t find one of the pretty little notes the Meralos have been leaving on our front door before I have time to tear it up and toss it out.
The morning brings gloom and rain, the perfect backdrop for walking up the gravel drive of the Accardis’ haunted-looking mansion. Black shutters hang over peeling green paint. The overgrown brush has recently been cleared away from the house. The gardens are still in turmoil, weeds choking the late Bella Accardis’ rosebushes as they struggle to survive.
My fingers grip the leather strap of my purse as I stand before the massive black front doors, deep rectangles in the wood. I take a closer look at the carvings in the doorhandle.
The carvings are angels.
