At the thought of it, I found my own hands balling up, ready to do their own damage to anyone who had hurt this beautiful man. Yes, I understood his protectiveness very well. There was more to love than just secrets.
“I wish I was more forgiving,” he said. “But I’m really not. Not to those who hurt the people I love, Nina. And she did that. Again and again and again, she did that. So I wasn’t going to stand by and watch her do it to my sisters like she did to me. I didn’t care if she got back on the wagon or stayed there. She was out of luck.”
“So what—what did you do?” I wondered.
“Told her if she contacted me or the younger girls again—Joni, Marie, and Lea were all still minors at that point—I’d file for a restraining order. I said I was done, and I meant it.”
We sat there for a moment, thinking about the story. Matthew wished he was more forgiving? Until now, I had really considered him the soul of mercy. Now I wasn’t so sure.
“My sisters don’t know any of this,” he said. “They know Mom and I don’t speak, but not why. And not about the legal threats. Frankie doesn’t talk to her either for her own reasons, but the younger ones do now that they’re grown. And because supposedly Mom is sober. Lea sees her on birthdays and holidays. Sometimes Marie and Joni tag along. Things like that. Lea knows the whole damn family on that side.”
“Your mother is Puerto Rican, isn’t she?”
Matthew nodded. “Half, yeah. Her dad was from Santiago, but he went back before I was born. My grandmother died when I was a kid, so I didn’t know either of them, and they only had the one child, my mom. But sometimes we’d see distant cousins and stuff.”
I thought of the day at the Cloisters, when we had run into one of the cousins from that side and his wife. A whole side of his family that Matthew had given up because of this anger. I almost argued that enough time had passed. That if she was sober and trying, didn’t she deserve a second chance just like anyone else? If his sisters could do it, why couldn’t he?
But there was a steely resolve in Matthew’s eye that was utterly unwavering. And considering that I had hardly spoken to my own father in years, I wasn’t in a position to argue.
“Everyone wants to believe in unconditional love,” he said. “But you know…you’re right about one thing, baby. Love as sacrifice ain’t real love. We all have to have our limits. Our parents are supposed to teach them to us, but when they don’t, we have to find them for ourselves.” He sighed, clutching the steering wheel hard. “She crossed the line. There was no going back after that.”
He didn’t want to talk about it anymore, and I let him be, content to remain lost in my own thoughts as the Tuscan countryside sped by, blurring my past along with the winter farmland.
But my thoughts kept circling back to one constant refrain. I was glad that Matthew had worked so hard to assert his own safety in a world that damaged so many. Knowing him, witnessing that strength, had given me the courage to draw my own line in the sand. To say enough was enough, and take back freedom and dignity that I knew I deserved.
I just hoped that by the time this trip was over, I wouldn’t have crossed Matthew’s line myself. I didn’t think I could bear it if he ever looked at me and, after all the things I had done, all the secrets I’d kept, decided that in the end, I wasn’t worth his mercy.
Chapter Sixteen
Nina
The farm was not exactly how I recalled, a fact that confused me until I remembered it was the middle of winter. Giuseppe had brought me here in full bloom of spring, when the olive trees were thick with buds, and flowers and dew shone on the gnarled branches like a layer of glistening gold.
“Holy shit,” Matthew murmured as he steered up the drive. “What happened here?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“The trees. They’re completely bare.” He shook his head. “I’m no olive farmer, but I remember the ones in Sicily having leaves year-round. I don’t think they’re supposed to look like that.”
Immediately, I knew he was right. I had explored Tuscany several times as a student—and never had I seen its famed olive orchards like this: row upon row of desiccated, barren trees, ancient and bent as if recovering from some invisible war.
Matthew pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse, where another small white car was parked in the dirt drive. We got out and pulled on our coats, Matthew his hat. Then we faced the stone villa.
Stout and square, its construction was similar to most of the farmhouses around the region. Its walls were a mosaic of sandstone and brick, topped with a terracotta roof. The entrance was shaded by a small porch covered in vines now twisted and bare in winter, but which I remembered flush with bright green leaves and the tiny buds that would eventually become sweet green grapes.
“Has it changed much?” Matthew wondered.
“Not like the trees,” I said, only now noticing the bits of stonework crumbling here and there, the roof shingles that needed to be replaced, and the wood fencing surrounding the house that split here and there from weathering. It went far beyond “rustic.”
Giuseppe had loved this farm. It was his family’s birthright, a place they had owned for more than four hundred years, he had told me. He would have hated seeing it like this. The disrepair, like the trees, was tragic.
The front door swung open, and a young, willowy woman who couldn’t have been older than twenty appeared.
