Page 15 of Broken Trust

“Go home.” She's already reaching back for the handle. “Gia’s going to be fine without you.”

“Will you tell her I came?”

She stops with her back to me. Then she spins around, and for a second there's something in her face that's almost pity, which is the one thing from her I can't stand.

“No,” she says. Then without hesitation she spins on her heels and heads back up the stairs. And flames the door shut.

I stand staring at it, not knowing what to do with myself for the first time in my life.

11

DANTE

After spending hours outside Nella’s apartment, it dawns on me, the one place Gia would go.

The cabin.

Driving there would prove that I really am a big selfish prick.

I switch the radio on and then off again, scroll through my playlists at a red light and can't stand a single song, and somewhere past the river I realize that I’ve subconsciously ended up going to my old neighborhood.

I'm going to my parents' house.

I haven't driven down this street in almost a year. I could blame the production or the traffic or a hundred other things, but the truth is I've been sleeping with Gia's sister, and it's hard to sit at your mother's table with that on your conscience. I park across the road, cross over, and knock on the door I grew up behind like I'm a salesman.

Ma opens it in her robe, and the second she sees me her whole expression shifts from annoyance to worry.

“Dante.” She grabs my wrist and pulls me over the step before I've said a word. “At this hour? What's happened? You look terrible.”

I could say the same about her, and I hate myself a little for thinking it. The robe is silk, and her lips look swollen from too much filler. Her latest facelift has pulled her eyes so tight that even at midnight she looks wide awake and slightly surprised. Ma was beautiful once, stunning really, and some days I barely recognize her anymore. Gia told me off the first time I said it out loud. It's her face, amore. If changing it makes her happy, who are you to judge? Gia always did see the best in people, me included, and look where that got her.

“Nothing's wrong, Ma. I was driving and I saw the light on.”

She doesn't believe a word of it, but she shuts the door behind me and heads down the hall toward the kitchen, and I follow. When I was little she'd kiss my face all over at the school gate as if she hadn't seen me in months, even though she'd dropped me off that same morning before her shift at the restaurant. Tonight it's been nearly a year, and she's acting like I popped in yesterday. I don't blame her. I haven't earned the kisses.

“Sit, sit. I'll put the kettle on. Have you eaten? You haven't eaten, I can tell.”

“I don't need anything, Ma.”

“Bruno,” she calls ahead of us, already reaching for a pan. “Bruno, your son's here.”

My father is at the kitchen table with his phone in his hand. He looks up, and for a split second I see the face I remember from when I was small, the one that made my whole chest light up when he walked through the door, back when he still walked through it. He left when I was seven. He spent the next ten years in a string of towns I couldn't find on a map, always about to send for us, always a few weeks from coming home, and he only came back for good when my first book sold and there was money in the family again. Ma took him back like he'd never been gone. I've never understood it, and I've never asked.

“Look who remembers the address,” Pa says.

“Pa.”

He goes back to his phone. “You want a drink? There's wine on the rack. Good stuff, not the cheap garbage we used to buy.” He says it with a touch of pride, and it lands somewhere I don't like, because I know whose money bought that wine.

I sit down across from him. Ma is at the stove cracking eggs I told her I didn't want, because feeding me is the one argument she's never lost, and watching her do it I feel about six years old, sitting at this same table with my legs dangling off the chair.

“You're too thin,” she says over her shoulder. “Isn't he too thin, Bruno?”

“All the famous people are thin these days. It's the fashion.” Pa pats his belly, pleased with himself. “Better than having a gut like mine.”

“He isn't famous, he's sick. Look at him.”

“And your brother calls me every Sunday from New York,” Ma adds, cracking another egg into the pan without turning around. “Every single Sunday, Dante. You, I have to read about in the newspapers.”