“Father doesn’t want anyone to know. He actually forbade me from telling you.”
Aria pulled back, blond brows drawing together. “He forbade you?”
“He wants to keep up appearances. I think he’s embarrassed by Mother’s sickness.” I hesitated. “That’s why I didn’t tell you right away. I didn’t know what to do, but I talked to Romero and he convinced me to tell you.”
Aria searched my face. “Romero, hm?”
I shrugged. “Will you tell Gianna when you’re back in New York?”
“Of course,” Aria said. “I hate that she can’t be here.” She sighed. “I want to talk to Mother about it. She needs our support but how can we give it to her if we’re not supposed to know?”
I didn’t know. “I hate how Father’s acting. He’s so cold toward her. You’re so lucky, Aria, that you have a husband who cares about you.”
Her face transformed at once. It always did if I mentioned Luca. Love—she’d found it. “I know. One day you’ll have that too.”
I really hoped she was right. Life with someone like my father would be a hell I couldn’t survive.
* * *
With every passing day, Mother faded a bit more. Sometimes it felt like all I had to do was look away for a moment and her skin had already become a scarier shade of gray and she’d lost even more weight. Even her beautiful hair was gone completely. It was impossible to keep her sickness a secret anymore. Everyone knew. When other people were around, Father played the doting and worried husband but when we were alone, he could barely stand Mother’s presence as if he worried that she was infectious. It fell on me to support her while I tried to get through my last year in school. Aria, Gianna, and I talked on the phone almost every day. Without them I couldn’t have survived. And at night when I lay in the dark and couldn’t sleep from worry and fear, I remembered the way Romero had looked at me at our Christmas party as if he saw me for the very first time, really saw me as a woman and not just a stupid child. The look in his brown eyes made me feel warmer even if it was only a memory.
A soft knock made me sit up. “Yes?” I asked quietly. “Please don’t let Mother be throwing up again.” I wanted one night without the acid smell in my nose. I felt bad for the thought. How could I think something like that?
The door opened and Fabi poked his blond head through the gap before he slipped in. His hair was disheveled and he was in his pajamas. I hadn’t drawn the curtains so I could tell that he’d cried but I didn’t mention it. Fabi had turned twelve several months ago and was too proud to admit his feelings to anyone, even me.
“Are you asleep?”
“Do I look like I’ve been sleeping?” I asked teasingly.
He shook his head before he put his hands in the pockets of his pajama pants. He was too old to come into bed with me because he was scared of something. Father would have ripped Fabi’s head off if he’d found him with tears on his face in my room. Weakness wasn’t something Father tolerated in his son, or anyone really.
“Do you want to watch a movie?” I scooted to the side. “I can’t sleep anyway.”
“You’ve got only girl movies,” he said as if I was asking a huge favor of him but he headed toward my DVD shelf and picked out something he could tolerate. Then he sat down beside me with his back against my headboard. The movie started and we watched in silence for a long time.
“Do you think Mom is going to die?” Fabi asked suddenly, his gaze fixed on the screen. He had become better at masking his emotions in the last few months. It wasn’t long before he’d be like all the other men in our world.
“No,” I said with all the conviction I didn’t feel.
* * *
My eighteenth birthday was today but there would be no party, no birthday cake, no sung Happy Birthday. Mother was too sick. There was no room in our house for celebrations or happiness. There hadn’t been in a long time. Father was hardly home anymore, always gone on business, and recently Fabi had started to accompany him. And so I was left alone with Mother. Of course there was a nurse and our maid, but they weren’t family. Mother didn’t want them around and so I was the one sitting at her bed after school, reading to her, trying to pretend that her room didn’t smell of death and hopelessness. Aria and Gianna had called in the morning to wish me a happy birthday. I knew they’d wanted to visit, but Father had forbidden it. Not even for my birthday he could be nice.
I put the book down that I’d read to Mother, A Wrinkle in Time, her favorite. She was asleep. The noise of her respiratory aid, a click and rattling, filled the room. I stood, needing to walk around a bit. My legs and back were stiff from sitting all day.
I walked toward the window and peered out. Life was happening everywhere around me, but I was left to stand at the sideline. My phone buzzed in my pocket, startling me from my thoughts. I took it out and found an unknown number on my screen. I pressed it against my ear. “Hello?” I whispered as I walked out into the corridor as not to disturb my mother, even though noises hardly woke her anymore.
“Hello, Liliana.”
I froze. “Romero?” I couldn’t believe he’d called me, and then a horrible idea struck me, and the only explanation for his call. “God, did something happen to my sisters?”
“No, no. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. I wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”
