Page 159 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4
“They met skiing. Their fathers had gone to university together, lost touch, then happened upon each other when my parents were teenagers at this chalet.” He delivered this information as if by rote, pointing at the building behind the young, smiling couple.
Amelia was a bit surprised he knew how his parents had met, but she didn’t press the matter. Not when he was busy already turning the page.
There were more snapshots. Mr. and Mrs. Folliero as young adults in various scenes and poses. “I do not know what this has to do with any ball,” he muttered, but he did not close the book or move away.
Amelia leaned forward and pointed to a snapshot in the bottom corner. “Look. That is Dolcina. At Christmas.” She could see a nativity in the background, clearly in the nearby village, based on the surroundings. “And look.” She pointed at Mrs. Folliero’s left hand carefully and, Amelia thought, purposefully displayed on Mr. Folliero’s shoulder, so that even in this casual snapshot, the huge diamond was the focal point. “They got engaged.”
Diego grunted and turned the page without comment on that. There were more formal pictures here. Of the wedding.
“A Christmas wedding.” Amelia smiled in spite of herself. “They did love Christmas, didn’t they?”
“Yes. It was a Folliero tradition.” He turned the page, clearly not as interested in the beautiful wedding dress or intricate gold-and-green cake as Amelia was.
On this page, there was a family photo. It did not look as if it had been taken by a professional photographer like the other pictures that were displayed around the house, hung by the Follieros before their deaths. This picture was more of a snapshot. Mr. and Mrs. Folliero, young and smiling, with a very large baby on Mrs. Folliero’s lap.
Since this baby was the only child in the picture, and he was dressed in blue, Amelia had to assume it was Diego. She laughed, couldn’t help the reaction. “Look at that pudgy face.”
He scowled at her, but it wasn’t anger in his eyes. There wassomeamusement, even as he only grunted and turned the page away from himself as a small, pudgy baby.
There were more shots of Mr. and Mrs. Folliero together than there were family photos that included Diego or Aurora, but these photos were all more casual shots than anything professional or posed, as if they hadn’t been too,tooworried about how they looked.
Amelia glanced at Diego. He was frowning at a page of pictures in which his parents had clearly taken some sort of trip. Sunny blue skies and tranquil blue waters, while the happy couple smiled for the camera in every frame. There were no children to be seen, so Amelia assumed it was a trip they’d taken without Diego or Aurora.
Maybe an anniversary trip. Amelia knew pictures could be deceiving, showing only the happiest moments of a person’s life, but she’d also known the Follieros. For all their faults, they had truly seemed to care for one another.
“They look happy, do they not?” he said, still frowning down at them, as if their happiness was some kind of puzzle to figure out.
“They do,” Amelia agreed. “They were happy, I think.” She didn’t know that it was comfort, but she did think it was true.
“It was Aurora and I who were not.”
She could not argue that. She’d known Aurora much more closely than Diego, and she had gotten mostly frustration and bitterness from the younger Folliero. She had never imagined Diego was much different, especially since he had not been around often once Amelia had arrived.
“I always thought…” She thought better of herthoughts, when he whipped his gaze to hers, stark and angry, a sudden change from the stunned sort of detachment he’d been sporting.
She swallowed, then managed a wobbly smile. “Well, this hasn’t quite given us a look into the Christmas-ball past, has it?”
“No, tell me. Tell me what you always thought.” He said it like an order, and Amelia felt compelled to obey it like one.
Still, she paused, considering her words and what they might mean to him. In the end, she thought…understanding was the thing he was missing. It was the thing that kept him stuck, seeking punishment over healing.
He did not know how to grieve or heal or seek to understand, so she had to offer it to him, so that he might learn.
“Your parents loved each other, and they knew what to do with that,” Amelia said carefully, trying to put the way her father had explained things in his journals into her own words, her own observations of the Follieros. “They loved the both of you, but they did not know what to do with…children. They only knew how to spoil or neglect or demand exactly what they wanted from you. They did not know how to…look at you as people. And because you were children, and your own individual people, you did not know how to tell them. Or show them whatyouneeded.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s very astute.”
“It was more my father’s feeling than my own,” she admitted. “But I did see evidence of it. Particularly with Aurora. She was so determined to be theoppositeof what they wanted, and they simply…let her drift away. I suppose they did the same with you. I just wasn’t there for it.”
Diego was silent for some time, just staring at her. She didn’t know what else to do but sit there and wait for him to break the silence or look away orsomething.
When he finally spoke, he ignored thecontentof her words. “Your father discussed my parents’ inability to be parents with you?”
“No, no. Not exactly, no. After his death, I found…his collection of journals. Over the past two years, I’ve been reading through them. It helps me feel like…he’s still here, or that I’m getting to know him better, or something. Just a few entries a day so I can spread it out. So I’m still learning new things about him even though he isn’t here.”
She didn’t know why she’d felt the need to confess all that. The details of the how and why. She could have left it at she’d read it in his journals, but instead she’d offered a piece of her heart, her grief.
How she kept holding on to her father, even though he wasn’t here. And hearing it out loud sounded…wrong, somehow. Like she, too, was holding on to an illusion that didn’t really serve her. Like he had been right when he’d accused her of having no life outside ofthis.
