Page 90 of Que Será, Syrah

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you where I went when I left home after high school?” I ask. “Didn’t you ever wonder?”

Rosa stares at me in surprise. “You went to Europe, didn’t you?”

“I meant specifically.”

“No?” she says, shaking her head, looking so worried that, there’s definitely no turning back now. So, I grit my teeth and tell her about Geno’s manipulations, and the fun times I had in Mama’s house. Oh, not that last conversation she and I had, the one about how she has everything she needs there. I’m taking that one. To. The. Grave.

“Huh. So, Geno screwed you over at eighteen as well?” Rosa says when I’m finished. “That’s so weird. Whatever we do, we can’t tell Bee.”

“Bruh, I know! Can you imagine?”

“Can’t tell me what?” Bee asks, showing up right on schedule, looking low-key offended.

“There’s coffee,” I say to distract her.

She looks at the pot, eyebrows raised. “Is there?”

“Allegra made it,” Rosa says loyally. “It was her first time. It’s very good.”

Bee shrugs, and pours herself a cup and joins us at the table, barely grimacing as she takes her first sip. “So, what is it I’m not supposed to know?”

Rosa and I share a look. “Legs was just telling me about the summer she turned eighteen. Apparently, she didn’t just go to Europe. Geno sent her to live with Mama.”

“Oh?” Bee says, then I guess the caffeine kicks in because her eyebrows shoot up and, “Oh! Oh, shit. How’d that go?”

Rosa grimaces—and this time I’m pretty sure it’s not the coffee—and says, “Oh, you know. About as well as you’d expect.”

And Bee’s mouth tightens, and she shakes her head. “Shit. I’m sorry, Legs. That sucks.”

“Oh. No. It wasn’t that bad,” I say. And I launch into the story once more, this time hitting all the, this-could-have-been-funny-if-it-had-happened-to-someone-else parts a little bit harder. And by the time I finish telling it, they’re both howling with laughter and replaying all the greatest hits.

“Madone. No, no, no! It’s Timoteo. Ti-mo-TEO”

“Sì. I know. That’s what I said: Tom-AH-toe.”

“Non ne posso più!”

“I can’t believe there’s yet another thing the two of you share,” Bee says. “It was funny, at first. But now, I think I’m starting to get a complex.”

“Aw, are you getting a complex, Bee?” I ask. “Please. Don’t even start. My whole life’s been a complex.”

“It makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” Rosa says. (And what I’m wondering is whether or not she’s intentionally changing the subject.) “What made Mama and Geno the way they are, when Nonna wasn’t like that at all. It can’t be parenting, right?”

So, I tell them what Nonna had said about how death, about the way it changes people.

Rosa nods. “Hm. Yeah, I can see that. It makes sense.”

“Little fractures of the soul,” Bianca repeats dreamily. “I like that.”

“Bruh,” I say as I shoot her a look. “That’s a little dark.”

Bee’s cheeks flush red. “I mean, I don’t like it, like it. But it’s a good line.”

“Like it, like it,” I snort in response. “What are you, twelve?”

“Well, that would make you what? Ten?” she shoots back. “So, you tell me.”

And I stick my tongue out at her, just for fun. And she does it back to me

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