Page 279 of Mario
It left them alone with their own versions of that night.
For a moment, none of us speaks.
Then I lower myself back into the chair.
“What do you remember?” I ask.
Matteo’s eyes drop to the table.
Tomasso answers.
“Coming home and knowing before anyone told us.”
My jaw tightens.
“The house felt wrong,” he says.
I do not interrupt him.
“There were too many cars. Too many people trying not to look at us. Nonna was crying in the sitting room.”
Nonna.
Anna’s mother.
I had forgotten that part.
No.
I had not forgotten.
I had buried it under blood and sirens and the sound of my own heart.
“Ricardo took us upstairs,” Matteo says.
Of course. My brothers and Anna’s mother had arrived shortly after. I don’t even remember how they knew to come. Had I called? I must have.
Ricardo had taken them away from the worst of it. Lorenzo handled the doctors. Diego nearly put his fist through a wall and then stayed with the boys the rest of the night.
“Will you tell us what happened?” Tomasso asks.
I look at him.
“You know what happened.” My voice is flat.
“Yes, but willyoutell us what happened?” Matteo says.
I realize then how very little I’ve told them over the years. One more thing to feel guilty about.
How could I have been so wrong about so much?
“I was out,” I say, my voice still flat.
I hate the sound of it.
“I had a meeting. Nothing important enough to remember now. Nothing that should have taken me out of the house that night.”
Matteo’s mouth tightens.
