I cooked, I cleaned, I did the budget and the shopping, sometimes with Mama, but sometimes alone.
Alone.
Yes, I could admit to Christopher that I was often alone.
“I hate the sound of silence,” I confessed to him then and watched as my words seemed to turn some mysterious key in the lock of a door he’d previously kept shut up tight.
His expression grew radiant as he pulled me from my chair over to his, up into his lap so he could wrap me in his arms. He smelled papery, the perfume of a learned man whose office was a library. Eager to learn as I was, the scent was almost heady.
“We will make music together to banish the quiet, si?” he murmured in my air as he fondly held me close.
I hummed in response as I wrapped my arms around him, surprised and awed by how whole I’d felt, how long it had been since my own father had hugged me or treated me with any kind of warmth.
My mother loved me, but her love was worn through at the edges with stress and responsibilities. I was her daughter and her co-parent, her dependant whom she utterly depended on. It had been a long time since she had handled me like a child, and a secret part of me, deep in my heart, missed that.
My sister, Cosima, loved me too. When she was home, she would sit on my lap while I read a book and have me read it to her. She would touch my hair, in awe of its colour, and wax poetic about how beautiful I was to her. She did not resent me, as Sebastian did, for being the eldest and therefore the most in control. She did not rebel when I demanded she help around the house or finish her homework. She was happy to please me, happy only to love me in whatever way she could even though I could be terse and unhappy.
She was special, my Cosima.
Giselle might have loved me too, but it was hard to tell. She walked through life with her head in the clouds, completely unaware of the way the rest of the family bent themselves out of shape to protect her from harm or anything that might upset her delicate sensibilities.
Once, when Seamus returned home with four Made Men armed to the teeth, their guns brandished in broad daylight so the acrid yellow sun glinted off them like dangerous jewels, Giselle hadn’t hidden like I’d asked her to. She was too engrossed in the chalk art she was sketching into the broken concrete path leading up to our doorway.
One of the goons, I still remembered him for the missing front tooth that punctured his leering grin, had noticed her and moved quickly, with too much interest, up the walkway to crouch before her.
I snatched her under the arms and dragged her back into the shadows of the hot, dark house before he could utter a single word. She’d cried out at my rough handling, at the way I’d broken her precious stick of white chalk, but I ignored her protests and shoved her in the cabinet under the sink in the kitchen before the man could follow us inside to find her.
When he rounded the corner into our little kitchen, followed closely by the others, including a wild-eyed Seamus, he’d asked for me.
I shrugged.
I shrugged knowing that Made Men did not take no for an answer and they did not suffer impudence, especially not from women, especially not one they barely considered Italian because my father wasn’t of the blood.
It didn’t surprise me when he back handed me so hard across the face I saw constellations of stars swirling before my eyes. I fell to the ground hard on my hip, agony singing through my bones, my eyes smarting.
Chipped-Tooth shoved me down when I tried to rise with the toe of his leather shoe, a cruel chuckle spitting from his thick lips.
They’d left me there, the local crew and my father, bleeding from a split lip on the cracked linoleum.
When I retrieved the twins and Giselle after they’d gone, Giselle cried to Mama about how I’d broken her chalk.
So, yes, I had family, though a small one by any Italian standard, but I did not have much attention.
And silly, twelve-year-old Elena made the life altering mistake of equating love and attention as one and the same.
So, when Christopher tugged my head with his hand in my hair to land a soft kiss on my mouth as I sat on his lap that fateful late summer afternoon, I was ready to do what I could to please him so that he would never leave me alone again.
“You’re quiet,” Dante noticed, reaching over to grab my hand, thread our fingers together and place both back on the gearstick. “Are you unhappy Cosima and Alexander are coming to visit?”