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That’s the only way Carina is finally convinced to walk away.
She nods to Gunn and whispers, “Thank you.” Then to her father she says, “Unless you want to go to jail too, get up.”
He doesn’t have to be told twice, though for the first time in his miserable life, I believe he regrets this.
As we load into the vehicles, Carina peers out the window to where Gunn is holding her sister’s remains.
“I couldn’t protect her,” she sobs silently. “I couldn’t protect her.”
My heart clenches in my chest at her words. She couldn’t protect Alma from death.
And I couldn’t protect Carina from this pain.
26
CARINA
People die every day. It’s a fact of life. Death surrounds us, reminding us that one day, it will be our turn. And yet we cannot believe it when it happens to one of us.
I move my head back and forth, studying Alma’s face as she lies in repose. No matter what I do, no matter the angle, I cannot make myself see anything but my sweet sister sleeping.
However, when I reach for the hand crossed over her chest, I feel the cold, hard truth of it. She’s dead.
My father sobs quietly beside me, his gaze downcast as he stares at her too.
“My baby,” he cries.
I’m tempted to soothe him. To tell him she’s in a better place and we will see her again someday.
But I don’t know any of that for certain. She might be in Heaven, or she might be nowhere at all. Everything that she ever was could be in that box with her now, doomed to rot before she had a chance to live.
God. She’d barely found her courage. And it was good and great enough that she sacrificed her life by throwing herself in the path of Scarlet’s blade. The things she could have done with that courage. The things she could have seen!
Gone. It’s all gone.
All because of him.
So no, I don’t soothe him. I let him wallow in the pain he brought onto himself. Onto all of us.
Alma Maria Di Persia, sweet lamb, beloved daughter and sister, is buried in the Sinacore family plot. It was a concession Luca made to me.
There are no other Di Persias buried nearby. My mother was cremated, and per her wishes, her ashes were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean. I couldn’t bear the thought of Alma, my sister who hated loneliness, to be buried alone.
“Tony will watch over her,” Luca says and takes my hand in his, entwining our fingers firmly.
“Do you think there’s more beyond the grave, Luca?”
“Yes.” He says the word with so much conviction that I have no choice but to believe it.
I breathe for the first time in days as the hope of her soul somewhere safe brings a beacon of light into my dark despair.
My father takes a pink rose from one of the grand wreaths Luca had made for Alma, and tosses it onto the freshly piled dirt.
Then he looks at me with sad, teary eyes. “Now what?”
“Now we leave.”
* * *
