Page 98 of Mafia Bride
“Oh,” I say. “Gia’s such a nice person. She’s doing really well in the US.”
“She is?” Paola takes my hand across the table and squeezes it.
“If you count that she’s smiling all the time, and she was so kind to me when…”
I drift off before I say something I’ll regret.
“Thank you for telling me,” Paola says, taking her hand back.
“I tell you every day,” Santino objects, but his aunt’s not impressed. She puts her cup down as if remembering something.
“I have something for you.” She gets up and goes into the other room, calling back. “It’s your mother-in-law’s. I’ve been saving it for…quanto tempo?” Her voice gets farther away.
“Your mother had you at thirteen?”
Santi shrugs, not interested in talking about it.
“Am I going to meet her?”
“Paola raised me. You want something else?”
Well, yeah. I want a lot of things, but the way Santino’s sitting—like a man who’s come home to the comfort of the boy’s rules—tells me that his aunt’s love long ago trumped his mother’s DNA.
Which brings to mind a man he’s never mentioned—his father. The son of a thirteen-year-old mother has a father with a lot to answer for.
“Trovata!” Paola cries in victory, scuttling back into the kitchen before I can pry where Santino doesn’t want me to. “It was where I left it.Ovviamente.”
She places a brooch on the table between us, facing me. The carved cameo ringed in 18K gold is a standard for married Neapolitan women. My zia has a traditional lady’s profile carved in white on a red corniola. This one is different. Three women dance on a dark brown sardonica shell base. Their dresses are gauze and every strand of hair has been carefully rendered.
“It’s gorgeous,” I say, picking it up. “I’ve never seen one like this. Are they the three graces?”
After anotherpfft, she explains, “Men carve what they desire when they can’t picture their own fear.” She shoots a look to her nephew, who shrugs her off. “Three Graces. Beauty, Friendship, and Cheer, because they don’t want to think of the three Fates taking their power or three Furies coming for them.”
“Dio, Zia Paola,” Santino sighs. “Not today with the women’s power talk, eh?”
“Hush, Santi,” she hisses, and shockingly, he hushes, and she turns back to me. “The Fates spin life, measure it, and cut it.”
She makes a scissor out of two fingers and snips the air. Death.
“And the Furies?” I ask.
“Anger,” she points to one of the carved ladies, who doesn’t look angry at all, then moves to the one on the other end. “Jealousy.” Her finger lands on the center figure. “Destruction.” Her passion for the story is riveting.
“Oh,” I exclaim with delight. “I like that. What are their names?”
I’ve already decided they’re my favorite.
“Alecto. Megaera. Tisiphone. Born of blood and beauty. You don’t speak of them or they’ll rise from the underworld to punish the sins of men.”
“Then why do you keep talking?” Santino asks, immune to her intensity.
Paola ignores him in a way I’m sure I’ll never be able to, and slips the cameo into my hand, closing my fingers around it.
“This is yours now.”
“Tha…Grazie.”
“Put it away,” Santino says after draining his cup, “before she summons them.”
