Page 116 of Mafia Bride
She exhales, looking at me as if trying to discern what I want to know about.
“I know.” She waves her hand as if the cigarette smoke is anger I’ve directed at her. “I was also pissed he wasn’t with her when she passed.”
“He—?”
“He’s so traditional.”
The way she cocks her chin in a random, upward direction, but somewhere within the house, coupled with the intonation of the wordhethat implies both disdain for this one thing, and a respect she’s supposed to exhibit in front of me, implies a specificity that I can’t ignore. I’m trying to unravel what, exactly, I’m misunderstanding, but she continues.
“Of course, he’d never be in the room when—”
“Wait a second,” I interrupt because anything she says will clear up my bewilderment, and right now, I don’t want clarity. “I think you’re confused.”
“A lot of us were, you know. I mean, I guess I understand why he’d bring her here to marry her since she wasn’t quite 18. But why not wait? Then, of course, we found—”
“Violetta,” Santino’s voice cuts Siena off. He’s in the doorway, phone in hand as if he just cut the call, Zia Paola behind him, out of breath as if she’d run like hell to get him.
“Santino,” I barely make a whisper.
“Wife. We have to go.”
“Santino.” I say it again as if his name can sweep away everything I’m afraid to know about him.
“We were just talking about Rosetta.” Siena flicks her ashes outside and crosses her arms in a faux-casual power stance. “Remember what you called her?” She directs her words to Santino. “La. Mia. Bella.” She draws out the last three words—my beautiful one—articulating each piece of the possessive with a little venom and a lot of sugar, as if mocking his name for her.
“Siena,” Paola scolds. “Basta.”
Siena stamps her cigarette out in a potted plant. I don’t know why that’s the moment I woke up to how clear it was, and how much that confused me. Maybe it was the definitiveness of the gesture. Maybe I felt like the cigarette, or the dirt, or maybe it was the way it indicated that not only was the smoke over; and not only the conversation, but the blindness that allowed me to be happy.
“We should go,” Paola says to Siena.
“No,” I bark. I want her to stay. Explain how I’d misunderstood, elongating the difference between what she said and what she meant so I can twist it into knots. She’ll laugh at how stupid I am to think this thing…this ridiculous thing I should be blushing over, because Santino’s my husband, and I’m his wife.
For better or for worse.
For richer or poorer.
In sisters and in health.
“Tell me, were they married?”
She shrugs, maybe realizing the danger of her situation, then turns away, maybe deciding she doesn’t care.
“She has togo,” Santino says more to Paola than to me, and I know I’m right. I’m crazy and I’m making things up in my head but also…I’m right.
“Not quite,” Siena confirms. “But that ring?”
“Siena Orolio, I will kill you,” Santino growls, ready to spring, but the woman I just met has decided to ruin my life, and nothing my husband says will change it.
“She wore it?” I ask. My hands shake. I’m cold. Not just a chill, but extremity-numb with a heartbeat as shallow and fast as a bird’s, because I know the answer.
“Yes.” The affirmation is gentle, as if she’s sorry she started down this path, but not because of Santino’s threats. She pities me.
“Don’t you listen to her!”
My husband’s demands are shouted down a tunnel that runs the length of the Atlantic Ocean, to home. I want to run down it, alone into the quiet dark, but I can’t. My brain’s occupied with what Rosetta was doing in Italy when she died, and how, when Santino had come to Zio’s house that first time I saw him in the hallway, he’d come for Rosetta.
I’d wondered why the king accepted the lesser sister who wasn’t as beautiful. I’d wondered why my father hadn’t sold the oldest daughter first, but I’d wondered the wrong thing.
