Page 103 of The Husband Diet
‘Manu… Emanuela died,’ Zia Maria croaked as if difficult for her to speak. ‘She was your mother’s twin. They were physically identical, but on the inside, they couldn’t have been more different. Manu was sweet, selfless, a hard worker. She had excellent grades. And a young man who loved her and was going to marry her. But she got pregnant before that and died during labor.’
Oh my God. ‘Where’s the child? Was it a boy or a girl?’
They turned to stare at me sadly and I understood. ‘It died, too?’
Zia Martina shook her head slowly, her eyes never leaving mine, until I got this real creepy-crawly itch at the back of my neck where the gold E hung. And then I understood. This was her necklace – Emanuela’s.
I am the daughter of Emanuela Bettarini. My mother’s dead twin. I was never Marcy’s daughter.
‘I’m Emanuela’s baby,’ I whispered, and Zia Maria sobbed, reaching for me as the other two hugged me and stroked my hair.
Dumbstruck, my mind on pause, frozen in time, I tried to thaw the concept, to accept it into reality.
I was Emanuela’s daughter. I wasn’t Marcy’s. And that, precisely, was why she’d never loved me. Not because I was unlovable or unworthy of a mother’s love, but because I didn’tbelongto her. I never had and never would.
I swallowed and looked up at my aunts’ beaming faces. ‘And my father? My real father?’
‘Edoardoisyour real father, sweetie. He was Manu’s husband-to-be. He loved her completely. And still hasn’t gotten over it.’
My father, in love with another woman. In love with my real mother. That certainly explained my father’s melancholic sweetness.
‘Marcy had been in love with your dad for years,’ Zia Monica explained. ‘And when he chose Manu, she was heartbroken. But when Manu died—’
‘Marcy saw her chance to swoop in,’ I finished for my aunt, who nodded and bit her lip. I finished the sentence for her. ‘The only catch was she had to take care of me. Jesus, what a price to pay for a husband, huh?’ As if I hadn’t known.
All this time… all this time she’d resented me because I’d been the deal-breaker in her marriage. If she wanted my dad, which she did, she had to take me on as her daughter. A child she’d never wanted. I looked up at my aunts through a swell of tears.
‘We were there, every step of the way, you know that,’ Zia Maria said defensively. ‘All of us. That’s why you lived in the same building as us. So we could all keep an eye on Marcy and—’
‘And love me like she never could?’ I whispered and, after a few moments, they all nodded simultaneously.
That was why Marcy never appreciated her sisters but heavily depended on them all the same to take me to school and back, help me with my homework, growing pains and… life in general. They’d represented, in Marcy’s little mind, a necessary evil. But she got away when she could, with what she could, by ignoring me most of the time. Living under the same roof so that everyone would think she was acting as my mother. Everyone, I’m now sure, knew the truth. Everyone from Bartolo, the butcher, to Mirella from Mirella’smerceriaknew my family’s story. The story of how I was born. Everyone except me.
It all finally,finallymade sense. I looked down at the album and leafed through some more while they each told me stories about my real mother, of how she loved my father and how he almost went crazy after her death. Emanuela.
She’d been the smartest in her class. She loved sports (I sure hadn’t inherited that from her), painting (which I did) and was training to get a junior flying license. Now that was something I’d love to do myself.
And now suddenly, I didn’t know who I was anymore. And I’d thought I’d been doing just fine with the divorce thing. Being strong and determined and all. And now I felt… lost.
I gathered my things and stood up slowly, feeling a hundred years old.
‘Are you OK?’ Zia Monica asked.
‘Leave her,’ Zia Maria ordered. ‘She needs time now.’
I nodded. ‘Time.’ I knew exactly what I needed.
*
A couple of hours of brooding later hadn’t been enough, so I went to my parents’ home and used my key. Thinking of Marcy as my non-mother was surprisingly easy. And uplifting.
She was lying in bed, leafing through a magazine. The pose that I’d always remember her in. She looked up, startled.
‘Erica, what are you doing here?’
No,Hi, sweetheart, how nice to see you.It was yet another piece that fit the puzzle.
‘Why didn’t you ever tell me you had a twin sister?’ I whispered.
