Page 278 of Mario
“Yes.”
“No,” he says again, sharper now. “You do not get to do that.”
My eyes lift to his.
His anger is sudden and fierce, and for a second, he looks so much like her that I cannot breathe.
“She wanted the baby,” he says.
“I know what she wanted.”
“Then you know you couldn’t have stopped her.”
“I was her husband.”
“You were not her jailer.”
The words strike hard enough that I almost stand.
Matteo speaks before I can.
“She chose it, Papà.”
I look at him.
His voice is quieter than his brother’s, but no less firm.
“She chose, knowing the risks. She chose with the doctors. With you. With all of us.”
“All of us?” I ask, my voice rough with grief.
Matteo holds my gaze. “Yes.”
I say nothing.
“You think we did not want that baby, too?” Tomasso asks.
There is something in his voice now.
Not accusation.
Pain.
Old, buried, furious pain.
“You think it was only yours to lose?”
My chest tightens.
“No.”
“Then stop acting like you were the only one who failed her.”
I stand.
The chair scrapes back against the floor.
I look at my sons, these men who were boys when their mother died, and for the first time, I understand that my silence did not protect them as I wanted it to.
