Page 52 of A Son Hidden from the Sicilian

“Why did you come out here, Lorenzo? To say the same things? To have sex again?” She shook her head, but she didn’t move away. “Something has to give. If it cannot be you, if you cannot love me, if you cannot give me achancefor something real, then it will be me. Leaving. It is the only wayIknow how to sustain this. I love you, but—”

“You think... You think you love me. That I love you. You think this can lead somewhere, but I know what love does.”

She looked up at him, those tears swimming in her eyes. The same from this morning. The same entreaty. She even reached out and clutched him. And he had his sisters’ and brothers’ words ringing in his ears. About love and trauma and responsibility. About wants. About life—lives they’d all gone out and built...while he’d built an empire. For them.

“Lorenzo, tell me. Tell me what you think love does.”

“It breaks everything!” It was a shout, tinged with all the pain and then it was as if some dam broke. The dam he’d built up himself, with every piece of responsibility, control and grim determination.

Now it was in pieces and the words rushed out. “My mother loved my father. She was desperate to please him. She would have done anything for him, and it never mattered. You cannot love away destruction. You will get there eventually, or I will, and the hurt we will cause in our wake will be...catastrophic. If you or I give in to it, we will destroy everything.”

“What did your mother do, Lorenzo?”

He stood there, breath coming in short pants, but somehow Brianna maneuvered him back to the bench, into a sitting position. She even slid next to him, taking his hand into hers and settling it on her lap while her other arm came around his shoulders.

“Tell me, Lorenzo. Tell me everything.”

He shouldn’t. Knew there was no point, no outcome that changed the things he’d seen, the things he’d survived. But the dam was gone, and so the story poured out. “We were very poor. I don’t remember anything else. Every time another child came along, food on the table got more scarce. Arguments about work, money. My father couldn’t keep a job. He could never stand anyone telling him what to do.”

Brianna nodded, sitting there next to him. Warmth on a cool night as her hand rubbed up and down his arm.

“I’m not sure when it started. She didn’t want to do it. I know she didn’t. But my mother would have done anything to make my father happy. Yes, to put food on the table for us, but she could have demandedhedo something. She wouldn’t though. He was her world, and she wanted to serve him. She loved him so much. I can’t count the times I heard her crying over how much she loved this worthless man. She didn’t want to, and he shouldn’t have let her.”

“What did she do?” Brianna asked gently.

“She got a job where she worked at night. I believed this for a very long time. That she was off being a waitress somewhere. That it was all on the up-and-up. Even as she...became less and less herself. But I suppose we all believed it because we wanted to. Because it brought money in. We were scraping by. Rocca and I acted as parents. Father drank. Mother became more...erratic. Then she got pregnant with Saverina and had to stop working her mysterious night job.”

Lorenzo knew he should stop there. It was enough. Surely she understood now, but the words continued. “Father said Rocca could take Mother’s place at her job until Mother was back on her feet. Rocca was only fourteen. I insisted I should do it, but Father said it was only women’s work. So I kept my job at the butcher shop during the day. Watched the children at night. Rocca helped with the children at day and worked at night. While my mother loved our father and he didnothing.”

“You must be so proud, Lorenzo,” Brianna said. “So many sacrifices, and those children you raised are in your home. Responsible adults. Good people. Who love you.”

“Not Rocca.” Was that his voice? So ragged. So weak? But these were words he’d never spoken. A story he’d never stitched together for anyone but himself. And it was something about that, about Rocca’s memory, that seemed to insist he finish it.

“She was my twin sister. We were more parents to everyone than our own, but... She began to act like Mother. More erratic. Depressive episodes. Mother went back to work and I suggested Rocca not work there anymore, but Father insisted. Still... I didn’t know.”

“What didn’t you know?”

He sucked in a breath. It shook all the way out. “They were prostitutes.”

Brianna’s grip on him tightened, but she said nothing. Only held him there. As though he weren’t to be blamed for all this. She didn’t speak. Not to argue, not to offer platitudes. Not to be so shocked and horrified he felt the need to hide it all away again.

She simply sat there. Holding his hand. Waiting. As if... As if, as Isa and Stefano said, talking about these secrets, these horrors could help a personwork through them. Understand them.

And it was that dinner tonight, and this woman here, who finally dragged the words out of him. Just by being here. Just by loving.

“I began to find out things...later. A client introduced Mother to drugs at some point, and the...price for her went down. Eventually it was the drugs. She died of an accidental overdose, but I still did not know. I should have. Rocca continued on. She never told me a thing. But like Mother, she became more erratic. I told her she needed to quit this job. I would scrape together more money. I would find a way to get her another that didn’t affect her so. At first, she refused, but then... After Father died, it was as if something lifted and she finally explained everything to me.”

“Poor girl,” Brianna murmured.

“I was so stupid. So blind. I should have seen it. I got her out of there once I understood. I tried to get her help, but she was...”

Everything in him felt ragged. He was a million jagged edges. Pain. So much pain. Because Rocca should still be here. If he’d known, if he’d had a chance to step in, she would.

Brianna stroked his hair. “Their sacrifices weren’t your fault, Lorenzo. You were a boy.”

“I should have said something. Stood up for her. For them both. If I was only a boy, Rocca was only a girl.” Because how could he absolve himself when they had been a team? And only one of them had suffered so?

But it was as if Brianna did not see this as his weight to bear alone. Because she didn’t leave him. She didn’t accuse him. She just kept speaking and holding on to him.

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