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Marialena’s brothers own a variety of bakeries and restaurants in the North End. Ownership has changed hands several times over the years, until now; now they all own everything together. It’s messy sometimes, but it works for them.
I take one of the seats next to Starla; it's quieter in this corner of the room. After my revelation, I'm not feeling up to being my chipper self.
Anyway, I have a date with my husband tonight.
Starla gives me a shy smile. Eden is more reserved where Starla is a bit more outgoing… even rebellious, one might say.
"How's married life?" she says as her pretty eyes light up. When Starla was first brought here by Eden and Sergio, having been rescued from an extremely abusive situation, she was easily frightened and frail. Nonna’s good cooking and nurturing has done wonders for her.
"I never saw myself as a married woman," I say to her, not fully answering the question. "But I suppose if I were going to marry anyone, someone like Adriano would do."
She giggles and covers her mouth with her hand. "Oh my God, you're sobold," she says. "I love that about you!"
I shrug. People have used worse words than that to describe me.
"Married life is still new, too," I tell her. "Our honeymoon was cut short, and we've had to basically hide out here at the club."
"Why?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. Something about ‘danger.’” I make air quotes around the damn word I could happily go the rest of my life without hearing again. “I don't know the details."
I’m not sure how much she knows about why we got married. I would doubt that she knows the full truth, and I'm definitely not going to be the one that tells her that I witnessed Adriano murder someone.
"I see. Well, I'm not an expert on marriage, and I don’t know much about Adriano either, but… I don’t know.” Her eyes grow a little misty. “I kinda like the idea of being with someone whocanprotect me if I needed it, but who respects me enough to know I could handle myself, too. I like how this family loves—all of them, the Montavios and Rossis. There’s a sort of fearlessness about all of them, isn’t there? Loyalty, too.”
“Oh, yeah. You can say that again.” I need a cannoli. “Yup.”
I think about what she says for a minute. I never really thought about it before because I never thought about marriage or commitment or, frankly, anything even remotely resembling monogamy.
"How much do you know about him?" Starla asks quietly, suddenly very interested in a slender silver ring on her right hand.
"How much do you?" I retort.
"Well. Nonna has been giving me cooking lessons. She doesn't speak a lot of English, but she speaks enough.” Starla’s eyes dance at me playfully even as she looks a bit sheepish. “And… maybe I asked her a little bit about Adriano?"
Now that gets my attention. Mario walks by with the pastries. I take a cannoli in each hand and start licking the filling out of one. "Let's hear it."
Starla bites her lip and clams up, an impish smile creeping slowly across her face. What a littlebrat.
"Starla," I say warningly. "You arenotgoing to dangle a baited hook about my new husband in front of me and not expect me to bite."
"It's not that," she says. "It's that we're not alone. I'm not sure how Sergio would feel if he overheard me."
"Then keep your voice low," I say in a little bit of a whisper. "I would say that we could find someplace private, but believe me when I tell you, that ain't happening."
She laughs. "Tell me about it. I can hardly use the bathroom in this place without somebody following me. Ever since you guys got married things have been ridiculous. I haven't even been able to go into a bookstore. I haven't seen any of my friends and Sergio even asked me to stop having meetings with my support group."
I know that Starla started a support group for people that had suffered the way she and Eden had, but I didn't know Sergio made her stop. Interesting.
She laughs at the shock on my face. "It's fine, though. I do get to spend time with my best friend." She perks up a little bit when she looks at Timeo.
Oh, Lordy. Her best friend, eh?
"Alright. Now, spill it. Just talk in a low voice and if anyone comes near us, we change the subject.”
“Alright,” she says, licking her lips. “So… Adriano had it rough. He slept on the streets. He was teased and humiliated by the other children when he was put in social services for being homeless. Did you know they had specific last names given to orphaned children? Esposito means exposed. Abbandonata means abandoned. Proietto, ‘thrown away.’” She bites her lip, her voice wavering a bit. She and Adriano share this much. “Anyway, Nonna said the day that she met him he'd been beaten terribly for trying to defend a girl who was robbed by a gang. He was younger than I am, and he was all alone."
I had imagined he was mistreated. I didn't know he spent any time in an orphanage, but I don't know much about Italy and how they treat people, especially where he was.
