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“It’s a recipe forbraciole.” She had tried making it last week with disastrous results but today she would not be denied.
“It looks old. Did you get it from Dad?”
“It’s your Aunt Vivi’s. Frankie let me borrow her cookbook.” Her throat worked over a swallow. “What was she like?”
“Her name said it all,” Cara said wistfully. “She was the soul of the party, always laughing and joking with everyone. The room always felt more alive with her in it, like Prosecco bubbles fizzing away. When she left, there was a bit of deflation, you know?”
Jules nodded, surprised at Cara’s rather poetic gush, which was so not her. She understood what she was saying. She felt it whenever Tad left the room or if she hadn’t seen him for a while.
“I know Tad was close to her, but what about his dad?”
“You think Tony’s a hard ass,” Lili said with feeling. “Uncle Rafe was King of the Hard Asses.”
Cara nodded her agreement. “Rafe was a chef just like Dad. They ran DeLuca’s together and he wanted more for his kids. He wanted Tad to go to college, fulfill all that immigrant American dream crap. I mean there was nothing stopping him from being a chef but Tad has a huge respect for family. Blood means a lot to him and his father’s ambitions for him trumped everything.”
Jules understood that about him more and more. The thought that a man could be denied access to his son had upset him greatly, enough for him to swim upstream and fight the prevailing views of the DeLuca-Kilroy mob. She had never thought of the word “honorable” when it came to Tad but now she realized it described him perfectly.
“He spent all his afternoons at DeLuca’s. Tony encouraged Tad because he wanted someone to take over, but Rafe was adamant it wouldn’t be his son. Tad was going to make everyone proud and be something important. A lawyer or an architect. They used to fight about it all the time, but then Vivi stepped in and convinced Tad to at least get his degree. When he was done, he could decide what he wanted but at least he’d have the qualification. Then they had the accident and he…”
The space between Cara’s dark blond eyebrows knit into a frown.
“He what?” Jules looked at Lili, who had turned a curious gaze on Cara.
“He lost himself for a few years. We weren’t all that close back then but I remember he came to visit me in New York after he had been traveling for about a year and a half after they died. He had been in Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, a ton of other places. I didn’t recognize him when he showed up at my dorm room at Columbia. Thin as a rail, with skin and a beard so dark it looked like he had escaped from a deserted island. Like Tom Hanks in that movie.”
Concern marred Lili’s face. “I didn’t know that. He used to call me every few months but I didn’t know he came to see you.”
“Yeah. I put him up for a couple of days and skipped classes to hang with him, but he didn’t want to talk much. He shaved, bought some clothes, and hopped a flight to Italy. He worked at a butcher’s in Tuscany, did seasonal work picking grapes. Learned all about wine.”
Jules could see him under that blameless blue sky, shielding his eyes from the sun while he stripped a vine of its fruit. Looking for a peace he still hadn’t found.
“He told me that he had a fight with his father the night of the accident. He said things and didn’t get a chance to take them back. They must have known he loved them, though. I wish he could believe that, no matter what he said to his dad.”
Cara looked uncomfortable. “There’s more to it.”
“What do you mean?”
Lili broke in. “He blamed himself.”
A cold gush crashed over Jules’s heart. “But why? He wasn’t even there.”
Cara’s swallow made her slender throat bulge. “They were on their way to pick him up. He’d been arrested for getting into a fight.”
Jules’s legs turned to water and she white-knuckled the edge of the sink. Realizing she needed a seat, she lowered her body to a chair at the kitchen table.
“What happened?”
“He was doing so well,” Cara continued. “Getting good grades and making honors’ rolls. You wouldn’t believe how sick I was at all the comparisons. Well, he finished the first year with flying colors and I guess he needed to let off steam. He got into a bar fight with some kid who was the son of a cop—knowing Tad it was probably over a girl—and before we knew it he was at a police station on the south side, and Vivi and Rafe were on their way to pick him up.”
Jules’s heart squeezed. She suspected that fight stemmed more from his soul-crushing argument with his father than the typical end-of-school-year cutting loose.
“And then it happened,” Jules finished.
“It was so random,” Lili said, her eyes glossy. “Some guy ran a red light. Vivi was killed instantly, Uncle Rafe was on life support for a few hours and Dad had to make the decision to let him go. Everyone was destroyed. Gina, Dad, everyone. But no one felt it more than Tad.”
Imagine loving someone so much your life stopped when their hearts did. If something happened to Evan or Jack, she would feel that way. Part of her would sink into the ground with them. She shoved that horrible thought away.
“But surely he knows it wasn’t his fault. I mean, everyone told him that, right?” Cara opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked squirrely.
