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I sat down in a random dining chair. “Nope, nothing at all.”
“Well,” said Melanie, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go to the office now.”
“See you later, Melanie.” Gio waved.
I said nothing. I started moving one of the longer tables into the center of the room. Gio came over to help. “You know, Donna misses you,” he said. “Tara and I stopped by Sonoran Acres on Sunday, and she was glad to see us, but said that you haven’t been around in a while.”
“What do you mean I haven’t been around in a while?” I asked, indignant over any suggestion that I was neglecting my grandmother. “I was there on Saturday. It was the only break I took all weekend except for sleep. I brought her Taco Bell. You know how she’s always asking for soft chicken tacos and says the kitchen staff won’t make them. We ate tacos and watched The Breakfast Club in her room.”
Gio laughed. “Ah well. She forgets things sometimes.”
“I guess it just wasn’t a memorable visit for her,” I said. “Did she seem okay otherwise?”
“Sure. Except she didn’t want to let go of Leah when it was time to leave. But once a nurse arrived to bring her to her hair appointment, she was all smiles.”
I thought about my diminutive grandmother, the undoubted Esposito powerhouse matriarch who’d raised two unruly grandsons when she should have been enjoying a calm retirement.
“I was thinking,” I said, “when the restaurant opening is out of the way, I might buy a house and bring Donna home with me.”
“Dom.” Gio shook his head and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “We’ve talked about this before. She’s happy at Sonoran Acres. Plus her medical issues demand regular supervision, and as her mind starts to slip even more—”
“All right, all right,” I grumbled, turning away. “I get it. It’s just that sometimes she looks at me with those confused eyes, and I hate leaving her there.”
Gio sighed and came closer. He touched my shoulder. “I know how you feel,” he said gently. “Last year Tara and I talked about getting out of the condo and buying a house so Donna could come live with us. But we had to face the reality that none of us are equipped to give her the kind of care that she’s going to be needing.”
This conversation hurt. My grandmother was eighty-two, and of course I realized she wouldn’t be around forever. I just didn’t like to think about it. Instead I liked to remember her as the tender force that would scoop me out of my bed as a small child when I would cry out from the nightmares of cold and abandonment.
My brother squeezed my shoulder, sending me some comfort. Gio was the one person who always seemed to understand everything I was feeling without me saying a word. Yet when we were kids, I’d always been the one to look out for him when it came to navigating city streets or playground bullies or the sheer bewilderment of being deserted by our mother.
When the Esposito family suffered ruin and a terrible rift that still reverberated, Gio never once faltered in his loyalty to me, not even when I would have deserved it. I couldn’t imagine any man I’d rather have as a brother.
“So tell me, Giovanni,” I said, “do you have any thoughts on how to make this odd-shaped dining room flow a little better?”
He grinned. “I might have a few ideas.”
As we worked together and then took a walk down the street to grab something cold to drink, Gio mentioned Melanie only once, saying he was pleased to see that everything was working out.
“She’s a keeper,” I agreed, giving an involuntary glance back at the stately brick outline of Espo 2.
Gio, who could read my moods almost as well as I could, raised an eyebrow and waited to see if I would say more. I didn’t.
