AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay, I’ll bring you tea then.” She heads off in the direction of the kitchen. I don’t know how I got so lucky to have such thoughtful grandchildren.
“Nonno, you okay?”
I turn to find Orlando looking at me from where he’s leaning on a doorframe. He’s the quiet one out of all of my grandchildren—that is, until he has a guitar in his hands.
“I’m okay,” I tell him.
“You know, she’s going to be okay. Nonna is one of the strongest women I know. She’s going to be okay,” Orlando repeats.
“I know,” I say, hoping like hell it’s the truth. I clap a hand over his shoulder, then make my way back down the hall. When I walk into the bedroom, Holly is still asleep and Theo and Romeo are sitting on the sofa.
“She hasn’t woken up,” Romeo says.
“You okay, Pops?” Theo asks me.
No, I’m not.But I can’t tell my sons that. I won’t burden them with having to worry about me as well as their mother.
“I will be,” I say instead. “Tilly is making tea. I think all the kids are out of sorts, not knowing what to do.”
“I’ll talk to them,” Theo says.
“I’ll come with.” Romeo stands to follow his brother out of the room. He pauses at the door and looks to me. “Pops, she’s going to be okay.”
“I know,” I say, once again praying that she will be. Although I’m not sure how she’s going to handle this.
As soon as they are both gone, I shut the door and lie down next to my wife. Holly’s eyes slowly open, and she smiles at me for a moment. And just like a switch went off, that smile is gone as quickly as it appeared. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?” she asks me, her voice broken.
I reach out and brush the hair out of her face. “No, dolcezza, it wasn’t.”
“What am I going to do, T? I can’t do this again. I can’t lose my sister,” she says.
“We’re going to do this together. We are going to make sure she gets whatever help she needs, and we’re going to be there for Bray and the girls,” I tell her. “Together. Just like everything else, we do this together too.”
“It should have been me.” She chokes on a sob.
I shake my head.No, it fucking shouldn’t have been.But I don’t say that. “I love you,” I say instead.
“I love you too.”
“Bray, the girls, and Reilly are coming for a week,” I tell her. Shortly after my wife fell asleep, I called my brother-in-law and told him that the sisters needed to be together right now. He agreed and said he’d sort it out.
“They’re coming here?” Holly asks me.
“Yes.”
“Thank you.”
“I wish I could fix this for you, dolcezza. I really do. It breaks my fucking heart that you’re hurting and I’m fucking terrified of not being enough…”
“Enough for what?” She looks up at me with tears in her eyes.
“Enough to keep you here. Enough to stop you from breaking into too many pieces,” I admit.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want you to feel like that,” she says. “You will always be enough, T.Always.Am I going to have days where my heart is breaking? Yes, but those days will be much more bearable because I know I have you.”
“Always,” I repeat.
ChapterThirty-One
