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“Remember, Ellie, these are our allies now. We’re making big bucks and things are calm, thank God. Let’s keep it that way, huh?” He kisses my cheek.
“And you’re going to delegate more, right? I can’t have this little one growing up without a father. I mean it, Donny.”
He kisses my forehead. I’m being a bit much, but my hormones have been winning these past few days. The stress of a wedding isn’t helping either.
“I’m settling on a date tonight, Donny, okay? It’s going to be three months from now. I can’t be showing. I’d be mortified. I can’t do that to my father.”
“Taboo, little rabbit.” Donny sits down next to me with a smirk. “Whatever you want, I’ll be by your side.”
He’s acting too nice, which is ridiculous. He’s always been like this, I remind myself. Attentive to a T. Still, maybe it’s the hormones, but I worry that maybe he’s been banging some whore on the side all this time, and all his niceties are just his guilt showing. It reminds me of how Marco used to act when he’d come home with two dozen roses, smelling like another woman’s perfume.
He leaves me to be in my feelings. I want to ask him to stay, but he’s got the business to run. And when thoughts of Marco and disloyal lovers refuse to leave me be to pick out some damn floral arrangements, I ask a couple of the girls over. Just their presence will help distract me from my hormone ridden stress. That’s all it is… I repeat in my thoughts, my hand going to my belly.
Marissa – Scar’s wife – and Nicole – Sal’s girlfriend – come by. I lie to them that Donny has business dealings later in the year, and mark that as the reason we have to get this thing moving. I pour them wine, and myself a small glass – just so they don’t ask questions – and we get to work.
Marissa has done all this before, multiple times. Once for herself, twice for her daughters. They all had big weddings, so she knows the process. She suggests Jersey, the city, Long Island. All have promise. We narrow down the venues by spending hours scouring through photos and talking about their experiences if they visited.
We settle on The Estate of Bordeux Gardens. Its reception hall is huge. Marissa’s been to a wedding there, and the food is apparently phenomenal. That’s a big thing in these Italian weddings. Everyone’s got to eat. Some of the old timers are so ridiculous they leave the gift envelope open during the wedding and take out money for each thing they don’t like. My uncle Richie did it at my cousin’s. The image haunted me since I was a little girl attending these events.
Now it’s my turn.
In the storm of my hormones, I finally make it to the calm eye, and think of being next to Donny on the altar, with our baby baking inside me. It gives me butterflies that I try to hide in front of the girls.
We gossip in between calls, mostly about when Sal is going to finally propose to Nicole. She’s a zany enough girl to handle him. Frizzy hair, pretty if not for all the makeup, and a perfect Latina backside. She’s half Italian and half Puerto Rican. Sal calls her Ginny Spice. It makes me laugh every time I think of it.
We talk, and talk. Turns out Nicole hooked up with Marco’s cousin a while back. He got hit too, apparently.
“Sal was yapping on the phone once, and me, being a nosey ass, couldn’t help myself.” Nicole takes a chug of wine from the oversized glass I gave her. “The Catone job hit three of Big Bobby’s young up-and-comers in one night.”
I gulp, not wanting to hear about this. It brings me back to the most traumatic event of my innocent life – way before I had to kill my own brother.
I refrain from letting them know I dated one of the guys.
“Makes me crazy to know your husband got mine,” Nicole says, and my eyes lift from the venue pictures I was analyzing. She was talking about Scar, not Donny, thank God. But it’s still awfully uncomfortable.
Marissa tightens her lips. “What our men do, is their business. They have their reasons.”
I exhale a bit when I realize this isn’t going to balloon into an argument.
“But those Catone boys were so charming.” Nicole sighs. “I was just banging him. Still, it was sad to see him go, you know?”
Now I’m invested and can’t help myself. “I knew them. Marco was kind of cute.”
“Mm. Yeah. Nice guy too. I think Sal said your husband-to-be got that one,” Nicole says in passing, and something terrible activates inside me.
The image of Marco lying in the front seat of his car, drenched in his own blood – mouth open and eyes like glass – haunts me all over again. Now… I can’t stop picturing Donny doing the stabbing. I’ve seen him act cold on more than one occasion. Usually it’s to protect me, but what if it turns?
Nausea takes hold and I cover my mouth.
“Ellie?” Marissa looks at me with concern.
“Oof. I just don’t like thinking of blood. Gets me queasy,” I lie. It could be the baby. It could be the idea of my fiancé murdering my ex-boyfriend. Either way, I have to excuse myself.
The thought of Donny killing Marco popped into my head throughout our relationship, but similar to how I didn’t want to know whether I was free, I didn’t want to know whether he really did that job.
For good reason, too. Because I feel all sorts of old feelings coming back. The old me. The scared one.
I go to the upstairs bathroom, lock the door, and let myself slide onto my bottom on the heated tiles. I hold my legs and remember how many nights I shivered after I found Marco. Mortality took hold of me like Donny’s ice cold grip.
