Edo put his hands up. “Okay! Okay! Enough with the third degree. I’ll tell you.”
Smiling, Chiara turned around and rested her damp rag on the sink as she gazed searchingly at her nephew’s face.
He grinned, but then his smile faltered. He ran his hand over his forehead with a sigh.
“Tell me, Edo.”
“I don’t know how to. I mean, where to begin? It’s just . . . not good at home. They don’t get me. I don’t get them. I know you have to side with them because Papà’s your brother. So I’m not sure why we’re even having this conversation.” He finished, lamely.
Chiara reached out to place her palm on Edo’s arm. “It’s okay. I love my brother, but we all know he can be a bit bullish. Tell me what happened.”
Edo put his other hand on Chiara’s before slipping away to pour a glass of mineral water. Chiara watched him, hoping nobody would enter the bar.
Draining the glass, Edo deposited it in the sink before turning back to Chiara.
“They hate me.”
“Oh, Edo. No. They don’t hate you.”
“No. Yes. I know you’re right, but it really seems like they hate me. I’ve been such a disappointment. I never played soccer. I never got great grades, I didn’t even finish high school. Plus, they can’t stand my friends. The ones I’ve dared to bring home.” Edo sighed and ran his hand along his well-defined cheekbones. “Isn’t this the plot of every bad American movie? Is this the part where I say I’m so misunderstood?” He offered up a wry smile, which Chiara didn’t bother returning.
She glanced at the door before saying, softly, “Edo, love. They want you to be happy, and they’re worried about you not finding your way. I know they probably act angry, but—”
“He told me to move out.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Chiara felt the ground slip beneath her. She clutched the bar for support.
Edo went on, “I got home late last night. Not so late that I’d have a hard time getting here on time, obviously, but too late for them, I guess. They were up waiting for me and told me I was wasting my life and to get out.”
“Wasting your life?”
“Because all I do is party and work here at the bar.”
Chiara closed her eyes against this fresh assault. She always wondered if her brother and his elegant Milanese wife looked down on her for working the family business.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Chiara, I didn’t think.”
“No, it’s okay. Your father has always been strange with me about the bar, and I could never decide if that’s because he thought it was worthless or because he was jealous that it was left to me.”
Edo considered. “I don’t know. Both, maybe?”
“Maybe. It doesn’t matter now.”
“I mean, remember all those Christmases that he and Mamma stormed out of here complaining that you got all the special treatment? We all tried to tell them that of course the family doted on you, after . . .” Edo’s voice collapsed as Chiara’s eyes shot toward him. “Oddio, Chiara, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—my foot is living in my mouth.”
Chiara shook her head and patted Edo’s hand. “It’s okay, Edo. I know what you mean. It doesn’t matter. Too many years ago. Anyway, your father probably isn’t a fan of you working here. With me.”
“I am though.”
“I know, caro, I know.”
A pause. Each of them exhaled in relief at skirting an edge neither of them wanted to cross.
Chiara began again, “So what are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“Yes. Go, I mean. Was your father serious? Do you have to move out?”
Edo considered. “I don’t know. I’d like to anyway, to be honest. At home, I can’t breathe.”
The bell over the door rang, startling them to attention.
“Buongiorno, Bea,” Chiara said. “Un cappuccino?”
“Just un caffè today, Chiara.” The older woman said, plopping down onto a stool to re-roll her thick knee-high compression stockings. “I have to get to the farm and get chicken feed. Almost out. Do you need eggs this week?”
Chiara moved to make the coffee, but Edo swatted her out of the way, leaving Chiara to turn to the older woman who was rooting through the bowl of sugar packets. Bea scowled, “Don’t you have any diet sugar?”
Chiara reached for the bowl at the other end of the counter, and her fingers skipped through the white and brown packets searching for—“Yes, here you go. We haven’t had a chance to refill since the morning rush.”
Bea thanked Chiara before taking the blue packet and tapping it on the counter. She looked up at Chiara expectantly.
Chiara wondered what Bea was waiting for and then realized. “Oh! The eggs. No, I still have most of the dozen you brought me a week or two ago.”
“No pistachio yogurt cake for you lately? No frittatas?”
Chiara smiled and leaned to the left, allowing Edo to place the cup in front of Bea. “No, no visitors for awhile and when it’s just me, I don’t have the energy enough to do more than boil pasta.”
Bea snorted. “Yes, I know. When Paolo goes fishing with his cousins, my dinner is toast with Nutella. Don’t tell my grandchildren.” Bea knocked back her espresso in three hearty swigs. She sighed as she wrenched herself off of the stool. “Uffa . . . ugh, I hate being old and fat. Remember Chiara, when I was young?”
Chiara smiled and accepted the euro as Bea turned and swung open the door to draw in the smell of low lying clouds that had begun framing the street.
Chiara scraped a bit of cornetto off her shirt sleeve before venturing, “You know, Edo. You could live here.”
Edo looked up at Chiara, eyebrows knotted together. “Here? Really?”
“Sure, if you want to. I have more than enough space upstairs. It’s not new construction, you know. There are some oddities that come with age, and you’d have to be okay that.”
“I’m okay with that.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. If you’re sure you want me here. Apparently I’m not that easy to live with.”
Chiara leaned towards Edo, pressed her check against
