Tony pushes back his chair. “You’re right, of course. We should go. Tomorrow is going to be a difficult day.”
I look at the clock. God. It’s nearly midnight. Mom’s funeral isn’t until eleven, but there will be so much to do.
“Thanks for staying with him, Mrs. Medina.”
She smiles at me, despite my behavior, despite everything. She puts her hands on my shoulders and kisses me on one cheek, and then the other. Her lips are soft, her cheek cool against mine.
“I know it’s not my place to give advice,” she says. “I think if your mother were here, she might tell you this. Give Walter a little time. Give yourself a little time. You’re in shock, the both of you. It will all come right in the end.”
I want to believe her, but I can’t imagine any of this ever coming right. Still, I nod.
“You don’t believe me,” she says. “Why should you? But I, too, have been through hard times. It will all come right. You’ll see.”
“Let’s go.” Tony circles her waist with his arm, and she releases me and walks with him to the door.
Mia hugs Elle. “We’ll go bowling. Or shopping at Walmart. Or a movie.”
“Will you be there tomorrow?” Elle asks.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Mia says.
Elle yawns. Her eyelids are drooping. “Go to bed, Elle Belle,” I tell her, and she doesn’t argue.
“Night,” she mumbles.
Once Elle is safely off to bed, Mia embraces me in a tumultuous hug. “I can’t even imagine what you’re feeling,” she says. “What a clusterfuck, right?” And then she hugs me again.
“Mia!” Tony calls from the door.
She laughs. “Once a big brother, always a big brother.”
Mia is like a breath of wind on a foggy morning, clearing the air, revealing sunlight. I hug her back, tight, and then follow her down the hall.
Tony waits by the door.
“You okay?” he asks.
I nod, unsure if my voice is going to work if I try to speak.
“Lock the door behind me,” he says. “Check all the windows. Sleep with the phone. Just to be sure.”
This is not comforting. I swallow back a sour taste rising in the back of my throat. “Maybe you should give me the ammo back? For Mom’s gun?”
It’s like a curtain drops over his face. All the softness is gone between one breath and the next. That hard, clenched look comes back. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“You got me thinking. Mom had the gun for a reason. Maybe I need one, too.”
“You don’t know how to use it. Guns are dangerous—”
“Just give me the ammo. Okay? If I use it, trust me, something more dangerous is going on.”
He hesitates. “Tell you what. I’ll just stay.”
I have no idea how to take that. Before I can protest, he gives me his easy, disarming smile. “You’ll sleep better if you don’t have to worry. I’ll sleep in the recliner. If there’s any trouble, I’ll take care of it.”
This doesn’t solve my problems, really. Any of them.
“You need to sleep.”
“I can sleep in the chair. Besides, I’m used to taking night shifts.”
There’s no tactful way to tell him I don’t necessarily feel safer with him locked in on my side of the door.
He misreads the pause and goes on. “Look, it’s not anything about you being a woman and needing a man to protect you. Mia’s almost better with a gun than I am. But you’re not in the best of shape to be learning about guns. You’re too shocked, too tired. After the funeral, how about I take you, the gun, and the ammo out shooting? Show you basic gun safety, teach you how to take a basic shot. And then I’ll give it back to you. Okay?”
“Yes? I don’t know. I’ve never been to my mother’s funeral before. Don’t know how I’ll be after.”
His face softens, then. He reaches out, hand curved, as if he’s going to cup my cheek, but then lets it drop with a small slapping sound against his thigh.
“Not tomorrow. In a couple of days.”
“And you’re going to play bodyguard that many nights running? I thought you had a job.”
“There’s always Mia,” he says, “only you’d never get any sleep because she can’t stop talking.”
“Tony, I don’t know . . .”
“Please,” he says, in the way I picture a starving man requesting a piece of bread. And then that smile, lightning swift and unexpected, totally disarms me. “Mama will have a fit if I don’t do my part. Please don’t put me in the way of a butt-smacking.”
His words present an image of his gentle mother, five feet tall and very round, waving a belt at her tall and burly offspring. Laughter bubbles up before I can stop it. “Is she as dangerous as Mia? Because that sounds terrifying.”
“Every bit. Hang on—I’ll just give Mia the keys. That way you don’t have to wait up to let me in. Okay?”
“I’m sleeping on the couch.”
“I’ll be extremely quiet. You won’t even know I’m here.”
My last bit of resistance is destroyed by a gleefully rebellious thought of Greg’s disapproval.
I wait on the porch while Tony jogs down the sidewalk to hold a conference with Mia. She waves at me through the open driver’s side window and slams the car into reverse, spinning the tires as she backs out of the driveway.
Tony walks back up the sidewalk toward me, and I lean against the railing for support. The reality of his maleness is nearly overwhelming. Just the idea of sleeping on the couch while he sits a few feet away in the chair, maybe watching me, sends blood flowing to all sorts of places it shouldn’t.
It doesn’t help when he holds the door open and gestures for me to enter the house first. I duck my head to pass under his arm and catch a whiff of musk and deodorant and sweat. He’s all muscle and testosterone, and oh my God it’s been so long.
Self-conscious, still wearing my T-shirt and my jeans, taking off only my socks, I lie down on the couch and pull the blanket up to my chin. Tony turns out the light, plunging us both into darkness. When my eyes adjust, I can make out shapes and shadows, thanks to the cracked-open drapes in the living room window. Tony is invisible in the dark rectangle that is my father’s armchair. I picture him in my mind like a movie sheriff, with a star pinned to his shirt and a shotgun laid across his lap.
For a long time I lie there, wide awake, my body exhausted but thrumming with energy that won’t let me sleep. My consciousness flits around, homing in on small sounds. My breathing. Tony’s breathing. The occasional creak of a floorboard.
“Can’t sleep?” Tony asks, after a long while of lying there, eyes wide open, staring up at nothing.
“Kinda wound up.” Three breaths. And then, “You were right, about Greg. He did hit me. Only the once. Under provocation.” The memory feels as fresh as if it happened today, not over twelve years ago. My face actually hurts, although it’s probably because I have my jaw clamped so tight it’s hard to swallow.
“Bastard,” Tony says.
Silence again. My breathing. His breathing.
The heater kicks on with a low hum. Outside, a car drives by.
Just when I begin to accept that I am not going to sleep tonight, that I might as well get up and make coffee and do something useful, Tony’s voice floats out of the darkness.
“My sisters and I used to play a game when we couldn’t sleep. I could teach you, if you want.”
Something in his voice, wistful, hesitant, makes me sit up and stare as hard as I can into the shadows to try to read his expression. But all I can see of him is his silhouette, a solid shape in the dark.
“Okay,” I answer, cautiously. “Because apparently I am not sleeping anytime soon.”
“It’s a kids’ game,” he says. “So bear with me. There’s a verse to go with it. Like a nursery rhyme, sort of.”
“Like ‘Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater’?”
He laughs. “More like Truth or Dare. No. Wait. God, no. N
ot like Truth or Dare at all. There’s a lullaby and . . . oh, never mind. I’m not helping much, am I?”
“Sing it,” I tell him, wrapping the blanket around me like a shawl and huddling into its warmth.
“What? Now?”
“I can’t sleep, and you are holding out on me with this lullaby.”
“You’re serious.” A silence stretches between us. Another car drives by on the late-night street and then is gone, and we’re back to the sounds of breathing. Tony’s. Mine. The rustle of my blanket as I shift my weight and lie back down on the couch. Of course he’s not going to sing. The idea is ridiculous.
My mouth is already open to tell him to just explain this game to me, when he takes a breath and does begin to sing, after all. The melody is haunting, his voice a clear, sweet tenor. And before he gets through the first two lines, my heart is vibrating to the tune of grief in E minor.
Whisper me this, my darling, my love
The song of the moonlight, of stars up above
Whisper me truth, love, and whisper me lies
Warm days of winter, cold summer skies
Whisper me anger, whisper me rain
Whisper me flowers, then whisper me pain
When I come to die, love, then whisper me this
The shape of a memory, the truth of a kiss.
Whisper me, whisper me, whisper me this
A lifetime of memories, and one final kiss.
Silent tears well up and spill over, tracking down my cheeks, but it’s a beautiful pain, half grief, half pleasure. When the last note fades away, the silence that follows is alive with emotion. His. Mine. I want to cross the room, settle down in his lap, and rest my head on his chest.
It’s all too much. Too much sadness, too much beauty, too much intimacy with a relative stranger. I blot my face with the blanket and try to settle my shaky breath.
“That is a lullaby?” I ask, breaking the mood.
He clears his throat. I hear his weight shift in the chair. “My mother used to sing it to us. I always thought it was. I never realized what a sad song it is.”
“And there’s a game that goes with this happy song?”
“Whisper Me This. That’s the name of the game.”
“How do you play it?”
“Whisper me truth, whisper me lies. You whisper two things, one truth, one lie—and I decide which is which.”
“You go first.”
Tony laughs softly. “All right. Here you go.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “The moon is really a giant spaceship. Grasshoppers have ears on their bellies.”
“Wait, what? That’s not fair. Neither one of those can be true.”
“You have to whisper,” he replies. “And pick one.”
“All right. I choose the grasshopper thing.”
“Good choice. Your turn.”
“Okay, but really with the grasshoppers?”
Tony laughs. “Nights on call as an EMT or firefighter means finding weird things on the internet. And yes, really.”
“Hmmm.” I lie back, pondering my turn. “No man has ever sung any song to me in my lifetime. The moon is not a spaceship; it really is made of cheese. Camembert, I think.”
“Definitely camembert,” Tony says. “I think there’s a moon cave somewhere full of bottles of wine to go with it.”
My laugh is a whisper. All the tension is drifting out of my body, up and away, like tendrils of mist rising off a morning lake. My limbs, my eyelids, grow heavy with sleep.
“My turn,” Tony says, but his voice sounds far away. “I was a contestant on America’s Got Talent. My favorite TV show ever was . . .”
I drift off into sleep before he finishes.
Chapter Twenty
Tony sits wide awake in the dark, listening to Maisey’s soft, even breathing, asking himself what the hell he was thinking. The song, the game, the vulnerability of sharing them after all these years, has flayed him wide open.
Logic tells him that the bone-deep trembling that starts in his gut and radiates out through his body is just adrenaline, nothing more than the PTSD he’s been dealing with since forever, but it’s worse than usual.
So much worse.
Every nerve, every memory circuit is lit up like a neon sign. His heart feels exposed, the tracery of his nerves visible and glowing in the dark like the project of some mad scientist. Even though he knows full well it’s not logical, he checks his hands and is relieved to find they’re normal.
He tries to hold himself in the present. This room. This task he’s set himself, to act as some sort of bodyguard for Maisey and her daughter. Who is he kidding? He’s no hero, has never been. He’s not even brave enough to tell Maisey the truth about the Whisper Me This game.
Truth is, he hasn’t thought about the game in years and doesn’t want to think about it now, but he has opened the door and the memories are determined to run through his mind, his body, dragging the emotional debris of fear and shame and loss along with them.
What he told Maisey about the game wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth, either. Playing had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with soothing frightened children and keeping them quiet. The game was played in closets, behind locked doors, always as a counterpoint to his father’s rages.
Tony grounds himself with his feet on the floor and grips the arms of the chair, but nothing he can do will hold back the tide of memory.
He huddles together with his sisters, all of them on one narrow bed. Vanessa and Jess have burrowed under a blanket. Theresa and Barb sit cross-legged, Barb hugging a pillow. Baby Mia is asleep in Theresa’s arms.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, his father is shouting. His mother’s voice, low and soothing, answers. Something crashes and all of them jump. The baby startles awake and begins to whimper, but Theresa hushes and rocks her, and she settles back to sleep.
Barb, always braver than the rest of them, tiptoes across the room to close and lock the door. Tony knows there is no real safety in this; the door to the room he now shares with Mia is cracked and hangs on its hinges, a reminder that locks can be broken and doors can be kicked in.
“Let’s play Whisper Me This,” Theresa says, cuddling the baby. “Vanessa, you first.”
“Okay.” Vanessa’s whispered voice is so soft it’s hard to hear through the muffling blanket. Tony doesn’t even try to listen. He tunes in on the downstairs noises. He squeezes his eyes shut, remembering the last time fists flew, of the sound they made striking his mother’s body, of her sobs, of the slap to the side of his own head that rattled his teeth and made stars flash in front of his eyes.
“Your turn, Tony.” Theresa touches his shoulder. “Whisper me truth, whisper me lies.”
He flinches at a dull thud downstairs, which is followed by a whimper and then the sound of weeping and more shouting. His body starts to shiver. “Boys don’t cry,” his father always says, but Tony’s eyes don’t care. Tears pour down his cheeks. His nose is running.
To his own surprise, his hands clench into fists. “When I’m big, I’m going to beat Dad up,” he whispers, and he means it for his truth. “I’ll make him stop.”
His sisters meet this statement with silence.
Barb reaches over and smooths his hair. Vanessa and Jess peek out over the top of the blanket, eyes wide. Theresa squints her eyes at him.
“That better be your lie, Tonio,” she says.
Another thud from downstairs. More shouting. A sharp cry of pain.
“I will,” Tony says, louder now, feeling that his sisters don’t believe him. “I’ll punch him in the nose and make him bleed.”
“That would make you like him,” Theresa whispers. “Do you want to be a man like that?”
Tony isn’t sure he wants to be a man at all. It’s all women in his life so far, his mother and his big sisters and now baby Mia. Dad is the only man he knows.
“Come over here,” Theresa says, and Tony crawls over Vanessa and Jess to sit directly beside her. She’s be
en bossing him since his earliest memory, and he’s used to following her commands.
“Hold out your arms,” she says, and Tony does so.
Theresa shifts the baby into his lap, and he automatically wraps his arms around her so she won’t slide off. He’s only held her once, the day she came home from the hospital. There are so many willing arms with all the girls that he hasn’t been offered the chance.
Which is fine with him. He hasn’t wanted to hold her again. She cries too much and takes more than her share of everybody’s attention. Her crib is in his bedroom, and she wakes him at night. He has to be extra quiet whenever she’s sleeping, too, and she’s stinky, all sour milk and poopy diapers.
Sometimes, he wants to shake her, even though he knows that’s bad.
Now, he’s surprised by how much heavier she is, how much she’s grown. Maybe she knows he doesn’t like her much, because she screws up her tiny face and makes a sound like she’s going to cry.
“Rock her,” Theresa says. “Pretend you’re a tree in the wind.”
Tony sways back and forth, pretending to be a tree, tuning out the sounds from downstairs.
Mia gives a little sigh and nestles against him. One tiny hand curls around his finger.
Something happens inside Tony’s chest right then, a sort of melting that he’s felt before when he’s petting his neighbor’s kittens. He doesn’t want to shake Mia anymore, or send her back to the hospital. He wants to hold her, and rock her, and make sure that she is happy and safe.
Theresa nods at him. “That’s the kind of man you want to be, Tonio. Don’t you forget it.”
Tony isn’t sure exactly what she means. He still wants to beat up his dad, maybe even more now than ever, because the baby needs protecting . . .
Maisey cries out in her sleep, and it jolts him back into the now.
This room, this chair, this man-size body that still trembles like it did when he was a child. He didn’t do a very good job of protecting Mia, he thinks now, or the others for that matter. How many times did Mia get hit after that night? Theresa and Barb, Vanessa and Jess? His mother? All of them, over and over and over again. And how many of those times was he cowering in a corner, behind a chair, even under a bed when the fists were flying?
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