Page 290 of Mario
My sons, sitting in front of me, now more grown than I realized even just a few moments ago.
“I never wanted you to think I had forgotten her,” I say.
Tomasso’s face shifts.
For once, his answer comes without humor.
“How could we ever think that?”
“Not even once,” Matteo says.
I look at them.
They mean it.
There is something terribly merciful in that.
Tomasso sits back. “Honestly, there were times I wished you could forget her for five minutes.”
Matteo’s mouth curves faintly. “Usually, when you were standing in the garden looking tragic.”
“I do not stand in the garden looking tragic.”
My sons look at each other, then at me, looking like mirror images of each other.
I exhale through my nose. “Careful.”
Tomasso smiles, but it fades quickly.
“She would have wanted you to be happy,” he says.
The words are simple.
Too simple, maybe.
But Tomasso looks uncomfortable saying them, which makes them matter more.
“She would have wanted you to be loved,” Matteo says. “And she would have wanted you to love.”
I close my eyes for one brief second.
Anna would have said that love is not a finite resource. She would have said, loudly and in a huff, that men in my family have always mistaken suffering for honor. She would have been right.
“I do not know what this is,” I say.
It is the closest I can come to saying Victoria’s name.
Both of them understand anyway.
“You don’t have to know yet,” Matteo says.
Tomasso’s brows lift. “Though if you are brooding this badly at dinner, I assume it is not nothing.”
I give him a look.
He smiles faintly. “There. That expression. Very romantic.”
Matteo says, “Terrifying, actually.”
