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“Aria?!” A voice booms and I leap from the couch, startled. I must have fallen asleep or something.
“Tony!” I cry out, pulling myself up. Alessandro wasn’t sitting there anymore. But I can hear the faint call of the kids in the kitchen and Alessandro’s voice radiates over them. Booms so hard I can almost feel my chest rattle.
“I was worried when you weren’t waking up…” he sighs with relief.
Ragged, beaten…destroyed…. Tony runs up to me, immediately helping me into the van. “Let’s get out of here…” he says, hurriedly as the cops pull into the gravel and he wraps an arm around me. “Together…”
I nod to him and smile.
As far as I’m concerned he just made his choice.
He chose us…
And not the Giordios.
Not Madam Rosa.
His breath is labored and he’s leaning his entire weight onto my sofa table, clearly exhausted.
Had he ran this whole way on foot?
How long has it been? I find my eyes searching for a clock, knowing good and well I don’t have one in my living room.
“So, you didn’t kill Edoardo…” his voice cracks as soon as I approach him, hurriedly. He had just taken a shower himself… But this time, I let him wear Edoardo’s clothes. I can tell he’s uncomfortable in them; but not as uncomfortable as I am with him being in them.
“He died from cancer..” I stammered for the second time tonight. The images kept playing. The memories I thought I’d buried kept banging like a visitor in the night, demanding to be seen. “A name I can’t even pronounce. It was stage two when we first found out, and he kept it at bay for a while. Two years…”
“I didn’t know…” Tony whispers, sadly, desperately.
“He didn’t want anyone to know…”
“No,” He says, shaking his head, “I didn’t know I had a brother and I sure as hell didn’t know you were his wife…”
“If you did, would it have mattered?”
He looks at me for a moment and then down at the floor. His eyes are bloodshot. He looks back up at me and clears his throat. “Honestly, no…” he admits. “It wouldn’t have mattered… But, I didn’t know you then…”
Chapter 22
Tony
Ihatedmymom.But I also loved her. I didn’t realize how much until I was on the ground next to her, holding her hand, begging for her to live. To hang on just a bit longer. In her own weird way, I know she loved me too. She always had…
“Mom!” I wail, collapsing on top of her. I wonder if she’s gone. It seems like she is…
She’s not moving anymore.
Her eyes are closed.
“Mom!” Alessandro screams desperately to Aria. I had already told her to go. He’s begging her. She needs to listen. But I feel her eyes on me, they’re heavy, burdened. I don’t look at her again. I can’t. This is already too much, and eventually I feel her eyes retreat off me and her body follows suit.
I look up to see them scrambling toward the vans.
“You need to go…” she whispers, weakly…I barely even heard it. It was so faint. So uncharacteristically faint.
She’s not gone yet. But I know it’s coming soon.
“They’re coming…” she whispers again, as the light fades. “Go…”
