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“I’m taking Ada home,” said Clarence.
“No, no, I want to stay!” said Ada.
Bron and Giovanni both said it would be best for her to go home.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Bron reassured her through her protest, and hugged her with one arm. His addition of an “I promise” brought some ease, and he let go of Giovanni’s head to fully accept her hug before Clarence could drag her away. They hurried away quickly, and all the while Ada flicked her head to look back at him and the retreating figures of Toni and Darcy farther ahead.
“What a mess this all is,” Giovanni said, and Bron detected a hint of laughter in his speech. Giovanni moved to spit in the grass beside him. “Will you help me up?”
Bron took hold of his head again, resisted as he pushed it forward. “I think it’s best you don’t.”
“Let me rest beside that tree.” He moved to stand. Bron had no choice but to help him, one arm slung across his shoulders, bearing the weight of his body.
“You shouldn’t have come, you know,” he said, easing him down the trunk of the tree. Though he’d been kind to him in the past, he felt somehow wronged by Giovanni, on Darcy’s behalf. Yes, he felt sorry for him, knew what it meant to feel rejected and have your heart broken, but Giovanni shouldn’t have outed Darcy to his entire family. Giovanni was the one who had brought Darcy pain, turned his life inside out, and then affixedhimself so close to his father’s side, like a substitute son. How else could Darcy feel? Bron was also wary of Giovanni’s lie, in which he’d claimed to have not attended the party all those months ago. While Bron had questioned Ada’s sincerity at first, there was nothing to suggest she’d fabricated Giovanni’s presence. Bron trusted her through and through. Who knew what else Giovanni was hiding. “What did you expect?”
Giovanni pulled his hand away, but Bron persisted at holding the wad to his nose. Giovanni looked at him sideways. “Do not judge me, Bron. You don’t know a thing about anything.”
“For what reason then, did you come, if not to provoke him?” The pause was inevitable, the glance furtive but direct. “You know what you did was wrong, no matter how much he hurt you.”
Giovanni swiped Bron’s hand away and gave him an incredulous look. “Don’t tell me you are in love with him.”
Bron let go of him to stand. “I’m not.”
“You are. I know it.”
Giovanni lifted his head, his hair mottled with spit and blood. The priest appeared then with a cloth and an ice pack, which he handed over to him. Giovanni moved closer again and clenched his jaw. “I am telling you, Bron. You don’t want to get mixed up with all that. He’ll eat you up like a ravenous boar, all the while believing he’s entitled to it.”
“I know you were together. I know you were in love with him too.” Bron wanted to go a step further.I know you still are.
“Ah, I see,” Giovanni said, mockingly. “So he’s told you everything?”
“Yes,” he said. “He has.”
“And you know that he is already married?”
There it was, an attempt to unbalance him. A piece of information meant to worm its way into his mind, start the questions, the guessing, and cause mischief. He let the statement go, though the length of it jabbed at his nerves. He had the upper hand now. Darcy had trusted him with that, and he felt the absence of Darcy’s touch, the presence of Giovanni there like an envious lover.Had Darcy touched Giovanni the way he’d touched him? He almost couldn’t bear it.
“Yes, I know he was married. What were you hoping to gain by telling me?”
“I see. You know that he is married to my sister?”
Bron went rigid, his momentary hold of power leaching away as the words washed from his mouth. Suddenly he looked up, in the direction in which Darcy and Toni had taken off, searched the margins of the cemetery through the glaring sun to find two little specks in the distance. He saw a knife-sharp flash of Darcy hurrying away from him on the dance floor, toward a woman who stood at the top of the stairs, waiting. Somewhere in the tree above, a bird twittered.
“Your sister?”
“I knew he wouldn’t have told you everything.”
Bron couldn’t fully hide his surprise but hoped he could deflect from the tinge of sadness by coming to Darcy’s defense. So he hadn’t told him the entire truth. So what? There must be an explanation for it. “He did tell me, actually. That they were married years ago. And so what? They are divorced.”
“Is that what he tells you? And I suppose that he has also told you that that girl they present as their ward is not a ward at all? Ada is Darcy and Toni’s daughter, my niece.”
His words were like poison. This couldn’t be the truth.What?“You’re lying.”
“No lies. Dickie knew; that is why he kept me around. Toni around. For Ada’s sake.”
Bron recalled Darcy’s words:“It was all the more important I marry and do right by her, what was right for the family.”
Ada’s face swam into his vision. Ada, who looked unlike either Mr. Edwards or even Darcy, with her honey-toned skin and dark eyes. She looked just like the Vespas. Like her mother.
