Page 276 of Mario
His shoulders are squared now, not in challenge exactly, but close.
“We were not children,” he says.
“You were seventeen.”
“Exactly.”
“Still children.”
“Old enough.”
The words cut.
Because he is right.
I had told myself I had protected them by sweeping it under the rug. That the official story, the sealed details, the private funeral, the absence of public explanation had spared them something.
I had told myself a great many things.
Matteo sets his glass down. “We knew the doctors were worried.”
There is only silence, and it takes me a moment to realize it’s not actually the room but me.
I stare at him.
“Who told you that?”
“Mamma,” Tomasso says.
That breaks something open in me.
“She told you?”
“She did not sit us down and give us a medical lecture,” Tomasso says, voice rough. “But we figured it out.”
Matteo nods once. “She said the pregnancy would be difficult because of her age.”
“She said we were not to worry,” Tomasso continues. “Which meant there was something to worry about.”
I look down at the table.
The food is still there.
Cold now.
Anna would have hated that too. She hated wasted food. She hated cold meals.
She would hate that grief for her was the reason for the wasted food.
My Anna.
My impossible, stubborn Anna.
After the twins, they told us she would likely never carry another child.
The pregnancy had been brutal. The birth worse. Too much blood then too. Too many doctors moving too quickly. Too many warnings delivered in careful voices after everyone survived, and we were supposed to be grateful.
We were grateful.
