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I nodded. “Okay, well I guess I’ll see you at work tomorrow. Tell Gio there’s no need to come down to the restaurant tonight. I’ll make sure everything gets taken care of.”
He looked a little surprised. “You’re not coming?”
“No, you should be with your family right now.”
He glanced around and then tried to reach for me. “I want you there,” he said quietly. “More than anyone else. Please come.”
I wavered. How could I say no to him, especially on a day he was hurting? Yet my brittle mood won out. Being here at the funeral home, mingling with mourners left me feeling deeply uneasy. My earlier sense of being slowly squeezed somewhere deep in my chest had returned. This was the first funeral I’d attended since my parents’ deaths four years ago. In that bleak time I had clung to someone else instead of sorting things out for myself, and it had solved nothing. I didn’t doubt Dominic’s sincerity when he said he wanted me around, but I still wasn’t sure exactly where we stood or whether he really was the man I had thought he was. And grief complicated things. I knew all about that.
“I have to go look after the restaurants,” I told him, backing away slightly. “There’s no one else who can do it. You and Gio shouldn’t have to worry about that today. I’ll call you later to let you know how everything went.”
Dominic sighed and raked a hand through his hair. He said my name, but I’d already grabbed my purse and was quickly walking away. I had to get out of there. I might suffocate if I stayed in this room any longer. Dominic followed me out the door and into the tasteful wood-paneled lobby of the funeral home, where I could see that there were two other rooms hosting two other sad events with a bunch of other anguished people.
“Melanie,” he called again.
I would have kept walking, but he seized me around the waist and tried to pull me toward him.
“Stop!” he hissed in my ear.
“I can’t right now,” I snapped and shoved him away with more venom that I intended. The overwhelming sense of death was too strong. I needed to breathe some air that wasn’t thick with sorrow. He backed off.
Just before I pushed the glass doors open, I whirled around. Dominic hadn’t chased me any farther. I expected that he’d look angry, or maybe see that he was already on his way back to the visitation room. But neither of those was true. He looked even sadder than he had earlier.
On the drive home I thought about how, since I’d started working at Esposito’s, I’d felt like part of a family. It must have been wishful thinking on my part. A therapist probably would have been able to properly explain the trajectory of my life, why an orphaned girl-woman hastily married the wrong guy, remained adrift for years, and then finally tried to pathetically glue herself to someone else’s family just because she didn’t have one.
Dominic wasn’t completely to blame for my confused cornucopia of emotions. The Espositos just weren’t my family. No amount of clinging to them would change that.
In the midst of all this introspection, I was feeling mighty sorry for myself by the time I walked into my living room. Even the company of my purring cats did nothing to thaw my dark outlook. So I called the only person I knew who might understand exactly how I felt right now.
“I was just thinking about you,” Lucy said brightly when she answered. “Must be that incomparable sisterly bond.”
For some reason those kind words spoken by my only sister caused me to burst into tears.
