Page 4 of Because I Need You
“I’m sorry. I’m not listening. I can’t wrap my head around this.” I tapped the paper twice with my pointer.
“I understand.”
“Who the fuck is Giovanni Masseria?”
Dave’s brows hiked up to his hair line. “You don’t know who he is?”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I did.”
“He’s…a businessman,” he said carefully in a way that made me think he was a freaking drug dealer or something.
“Oh, my God. Is he a drug dealer? A loan shark? Did my dad owe money to a loan shark? Is that what this is?” I asked, clearly having read enough fictional books that led to this.
“A loan shark? No.” Dave laughed but grew serious when he saw that this was not a joke to me.
“So, who is he?” I asked. “I need to find him and ask him for a divorce. He doesn’t know me. I don’t know him. How hard can that be?”
He stared at me for a long moment, as if trying to read something on my face that wasn’t there. Then he said, “You really don’t know who he is.”
“I already told you I don’t know who he is.” I slapped my hands on the table and stared at him.
“I see you get your temper from your father.”
“It’s not a temper,” I said, through my teeth. “I just don’t like to waste time, and this feels like a waste of time if you’re not going to outright tell me what my dad was involved with or who the hell I’m secretly married to. Does this guy know I even exist?”
“I’m just as much in the dark here as you are. I only know just enough.”
“Look, Dave.” I shut my eyes for a moment and drew in a breath then opened them again. “I’m a middle school teacher. My father owned a painting company. My mother worked at restaurants most of her life, and now you’re telling me that my dad left me millions of dollars and investment properties, when he drove the same beat-up truck for ten years?” I stared at him. “Do you understand why I’m having a very difficult time wrapping my head around all of this?”
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” he said calmly. “I think the second marriage license is probably the worst of it.”
“The worst of it?” I barked out a laugh. “Living a lie my entire life isn’t the worst of it? Being the product of an affair? Finding out my father had a whole other family?”
“I’m sorry.” He cleared his throat.
“Was his name even Charles Bonetti?”
“Yes.”
“There were a lot of people at his funeral,” I said, “Why’d he leave it all to me?”
“It was under you and your brother’s name, but considering Vinny is dead…”
“Right.” I swallowed.
“Did you ever meet any of your father’s friends, employees, or acquaintances while you were visiting him?”
I thought about it. I’d met a few of his employees, of course. I’d met Sal and Andy, who were super nice to me and always gave me a Cadbury Crème Egg on Easter. Every year, they’d give me one if I was with my dad. If I wasn’t, he’d give it to me next time he saw me. I couldn’t even remember what they looked like. All my memories from that time were a haze. I remembered names, not faces. It was the opposite for me now. I remembered faces of all my students, but not all of their names. I’d met a man named Joe. I remembered him the most, because he was so tall and built and reminded me of one of those badass guys in the action movies Dad and I watched together.
“I remember some guys named Sal and Andy and a guy named Joe,” I said. “I remember Joe had a construction company and Dad worked with him a lot. I went out to dinner with him and his wife.” I smiled, remembering. “It was my birthday, so his wife brought a special cake to the restaurant, just for me. It was a My Little Pony cake.”
“Joe. Do you know his last name?”
I shook my head. “I was too young. Why? Would he know anything about this marriage thing?”
“He might.” Dave cocked his head in a way that told me he felt uneasy talking about this Joe guy.
We continued. I signed off on everything I needed to sign off on. When we finished, Dave said he’d walk me downstairs. We made small talk about Cubs games and the weather as we took the elevator down, but my head was still spinning from everything that had just occurred upstairs. When we reached the lobby, I turned to thank him, and noticed his face was serious again.
“Isabel,” he started, “I couldn’t tell you this before, and I probably shouldn’t be telling you now, but I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. That Joe person you met? It was probably Joseph Masseria.”
