by Callie Hart
Giacomo huffs down his nose, flaring his nostrils. He doesn’t seem to like or agree with the statement I’ve just made. He squints off to the right, where a huge cruiser is parked against the curb fifty feet down the road. His bike, I presume. “Kids made it safe to New Hampshire, I heard,” he says stiffly. “Personally, I can’t see the attraction. Tying themselves to a stuffy institution like that for four years. Spending all that money on an education that’ll end up being no good to ’em. Shoulda gone traveling or something. Gotten some real-life experience.”
“Oh, yeah? The foster care system? Getting shot? Raped? Arrested? Nearly killed a couple of times a piece? I think both our children have had enough life experience already, don’t you? Dartmouth’s exactly what they need right now. It’ll be good for them. They’re both too smart…brilliant, actually…to be wasting their intellect riding around the country on a motorcycle, waiting for trouble to track them down and destroy their lives all over again.” I can’t get this bitter, acidic taste out of my mouth. It seems to grow worse whenever Giacomo speaks. This is the man who abandoned Alex and Ben when they needed him. He’s the piece of shit who abused Alex’s mother, and left her high and dry in her darkest hours. Looking at him now, I’m surprised to realize that I don’t just want to hit the bastard. I want to really hurt him.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “I’d have thought you’d be long gone by now. Monty’s dead. The Dreadnaughts have been disbanded. Alex is gone. There’s nothing to keep you in Raleigh anymore.”
Giacomo wags a finger at me, a fake smile plastered all over his face. “You…you don’t like me much, do you, Cameron?”
“I’d be lying if I said I did.”
“Everyone’s so quick to judge, aren’t they? Oh, Giacomo’s the bad guy. Giacomo’s a piece of shit. Giacomo doesn’t deserve to breathe the same fresh air as the rest of us Raleigh well-to-do’s. Well, I…am officially hurt, Cam. Us about to become family and all. Does this mean you won’t be setting a spot at the table for me when my son and your precious little firecracker come home for Christmas?”
I shake my head, looking him square in the eye. “No. You won’t be welcome here.”
Giacomo chuckles darkly. “Whew. You weren’t kidding, huh? Straight from the hip.” He twists quickly, making a finger-gun and pretending to draw it on me, using his thumb to cock the hammer and shoot me three times in quick succession. “He’s too old for you to adopt him, Cameron. He’s got my blood running in his veins. He’s a Moretti. He’s my son. Best you don’t forget that.”
God, what a bastard. He ran out on Alex when he was six years old and he never looked back. Why the hell would he bother trying to claim him now, when Alex doesn’t need or want him in his life. “There you go again,” I say sadly. “I’ll say it one more time with feeling. People are not toys, Giacomo. You can’t break someone and toss them aside, only to throw a temper tantrum when someone else takes interest in them. Alex is a man now, and you don’t even know him. I’m afraid that probably isn’t going to change.”
Like a feral, threatened dog, Giacomo Moretti growls. “Whatever you say, Poindexter. I s’pose time’ll tell. Alex ain’t cut out for college. And he sure as hell ain’t cut out for marriage. I’m betting your precious Silver comes crying to daddy about her broken heart before the end of the first semester. Until then, I’m sure my boy’ll have his fun. We Morettis always do.”
Sighing, I pinch the bridge of my nose. It’s so, so sad how wrong he is. Truly. “The blood in Alex’s veins has nothing to do with who he’s become. You shove the Moretti name in people’s faces like it’s something to be feared. By rights, the Moretti name’s something your son should be ashamed of. You’re weak, and you’re selfish, and you don’t five a give a fuck about anyone else. Alexz is nothing like you, though. He’s brave, and he’s good. He’s loyal, and his capacity to love, despite everything you allowed him to suffer through, is remarkable. You might have tainted your family name, but Alex has made it shine. He’s restored it to something he can be proud of. And I’ll be damn proud when Silver becomes a Moretti, too, because as far as I’m concerned, it’s a name that represents strength and courage. Alex might not be my son by birth. He might not even be my son by law yet, but he is one of the brightest parts of my life, and I’m honored to have him as a part of my family. Now, if you’ll excuse me, if I hurry, I can still be early for my date.”
I’m not a very brave person by nature, which is why I’m all the more impressed with myself as I stroll past Alex’s father and up the path toward the cottage without flinching. I only know he’s not going to kill me when I hear the growl of his motorcycle start up on the street.
Once he’s gone, I lift my hand to knock on the cottage door…
…and Maeve Rogers answers with a smile on her face.
Epilogue
Ivy league.
Jesus fucking Christ.
When he was still alive, Gary Quincy took great pleasure in telling me what a worthless piece of shit I was. I can’t count how many times he assured me that I was never going to amount to anything, and all the while he was spewing hate and did his best to tear me down, I was scheming.
Tell me I’m worthless, and I’ll make damn sure I’m worth more than you.
Tell me I’m stupid and I’ll break my neck to make sure I’m way smarter than you.
Tell me I’m never going to amount to shit, and I’ll rise above just to spite you.
So now, through a series of bizarre, horrific, and sporadically wonderful events, I am a fucking Ivy League college student. What a fucking riot.
Thanks to Coach Foley’s insistent and highly annoying nagging, brutal training regime, and her amazing stubbornness, not only did I manage to get into Dartmouth with Silver, but I bagged myself a full ride, too. The woman’s part psychopath, part miracle worker, and I owe her big time.
Graduation was a surreal affair to say the least. I didn’t feel like I belonged up there on that stage beside Silver, and yet I fucking earned my place there.
Now I stick out like a sore thumb at college, just like I did at Raleigh. Only difference is…no one here really seems to care. The ink, my clothes, the way I walk and talk…none of it fazes anyone at all. And, most important of all, Silver’s happy. She’s more than just happy. She’s flourishing. It’s the most amazing thing; I get to watch her put down new roots in this remarkable place, and I get to watch her grow into herself.
Thanks to Cam’s non-too-subtle influence, I plan on studying architectural design as my major. Silver’s majoring in Space Sciences. We have no shared classes. We rush out of the door in the mornings at different times, and sometimes we’re both so exhausted by the end of the day that we don’t even get to eat dinner before we’re passing out on the couch. The classes are hard, the workload is unforgiving, and there aren’t enough hours in the day…but I’m with Silver. I could be walking through fire and brimstone and I wouldn’t mind, so long as I have her by my side.
“Did you know your new friend thinks the Earth is flat?” Silver asks, taking a giant bite out of her pizza slice. We have assignments hanging over us like the blade of a guillotine, but we’ve taken a break to fuel up on carbs and sugar. A Hammer Horror B-movie plays on the TV with the sound muted. The air conditioner in our small yet perfect apartment whirs industriously, doing little to cool down the living room, but I’m not complaining. If it were cooler, Silver would be wearing more than her skimpy little shorts and a thin t-shirt, and I am enjoying the view far too much to bitch about the stifling heat.
I arch an eyebrow at her, jamming my own pizza slice into my mouth. “Monroe?”
She nods. Her hair’s tied up in a messy bun, strands fallen loose, framing her face. Silver looks incredible when she’s run a brush through her hair and she’s wearing a little makeup, but she looks best when her skin is bare and she looks like she’s just been fucked. Which she has. “They have a flat earther society on campus.”
For fuck’s sake. Just when you think you’ve made a normal friend… “And Monroe’s a member? Monroe? The guy with the buzzcut and the tricked-out Dodge Charger?”
Silver swallows, smiling, and leans over to kiss me. “Sorry, passarotto. I think he’s actually president of the club.”
“Fuck.”
“Back to the drawing board on the Zander replacement, then?”
I pull her plump, too-tempting bottom lip into my mouth and I give it a gentle bite, running my tongue playfully over the spot that I just pressed between my teeth. “Zander should not be replaced. Zander is a pain in the ass. I’m relieved I don’t have to deal with his bullshit anymore.”
Silver laughs, falling back onto the sofa. The skin around the base of her throat that was once bruised dark purple is back to normal now. Just like the doctors promised, you’d never know to look at her that she’d even been hurt. “God, you’re such a liar, Alessandro Moretti. You miss having him around, I know you do.”
Urgh. She might be right. I’m on the verge of admitting to myself that Zander Hawkins proved himself to be a good friend after all. It’ll be a long time yet that I admit anything of the sort out loud, though. And potentially years before I tell him so to his smug, annoyingly cocky face.
“I got an email from Mom today,” Silver tells me. “She bought the house in Toronto. My little brother’s officially gonna be a Canadian.”
“You pissed?” I know how much Silver misses Max. They’ve been FaceTiming with each other nearly every day, though Silver’s been quick to cut their calls short whenever I come home. I think she feels bad that she’s building a better relationship with her brother, even though I’ve told her countless times that it doesn’t bother me. If Ben were still alive, I’d be talking to him twenty-four seven.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “He loves it there, and he’s made a ton of new friends. I think it’ll be good for him. He asked if we’d go visit him soon.”
“Hah! You think you can handle spending five minutes in a room with your mother?” Things haven’t been as great on the Parisi mother/daughter front. Kacey’s revelation at prom that Silver’s mom had an affair with her father went down like a lead balloon. Silver confronted her about it, but the woman refused to discuss the matter. In Silver’s eyes, her silence is tantamount to an admission of guilt.
Silver pulls a face. She’s getting better at changing the subject. “Oh! And speaking of mail, a package came from Maeve for you this morning.”
I smirk at the mention of the woman’s name. He hasn’t told Silver yet because he’s a pussy of the highest order, but Cameron confided in me that he’d had a date with my ex-social worker and they’d hit it off in a pretty big way. Apparently, they exchanged numbers at the diner, the day Silver and I played in public together for the first time, and have been texting each other ever since. I figured I’d be rid of Maeve the moment I turned eighteen, but now I’m not so sure. She’s fussed over and mothered the shit out of me ever since she took over my case when I moved to Raleigh. Now, there’s a chance that she could end up being my mother-in-law for real. This shit just gets weirder and weirder, I swear.
“Probably a court order, demanding we go back to our dorms and stay there like good little kids,” I muse. Technically, Silver and I are not supposed to be living together. On paper, Silver’s official residence is at Morton Hall in East Wheelock House. I have digs assigned on the same floor. Cam and Maeve both signed off on paperwork to prove that Silver and I have a domestic partnership, but the powers that be said we hadn’t been together long enough for the administration to recognize the relationship. So, I used the money I had left over from my time working as Monty’s runner to rent a small pad five minutes away from campus for us instead. We show our faces in dorms every now and then, study there sometimes, use the laundry just to put on a show for the floor directors, but we live here.
After we’ve eaten, I grab the package from Maeve, wondering what the fuck is inside it. When you age out of the foster care system and CPS is no longer responsible for your well-being, it’s not like the send you a fucking certificate or anything. Much like a bad breakup, you part ways hoping to god you never have to hear from or speak to the other party ever again. I pull the thick sheaf of papers out of the heavily taped padded envelop Maeve has sent me, expecting to find official documents inside. Maybe even a bill of some kind; I wouldn’t put it past the board at Denney to somehow try and charge me for the time I spent in juvie with Zander. The last thing I’m expecting to find are drawings.
Pencil. Pen. Ink. Even paint.
And they’re all of my mother.
Alex,
You don’t need to work in a field like mine to know that families are complicated. It’s a universal and very obvious truth. People are flawed and unreliable. They hurt each other all the time, especially those closest to them, which makes the pain they cause so much worse. But you must know that even the very worst people occasionally have redeeming moments. Your father came to see me this morning. He didn’t want your address, and he swore he wasn’t going to bother you. He seemed quite adamant that you were going to come to your senses and track him down after all is said and done, which I really hope you do not do.
Anyway, he brought these drawings to me and asked if I would pass them on. Your mother was a striking, very beautiful woman, Alex. I’ve seen pictures of her, but the way your father captured her in these sketches only heightens her beauty. The sheer amount of times he drew her shows just how much he must have loved her at one point in his life.
There are so many things about your father that are ugly, but the amount of love he poured into these pictures of your mother is beautiful, Alex. You hate him, and I don’t blame you for that. I kind of hate him for you, too. But that doesn’t mean you can’t love the art he created.
I hope everything in New Hampshire’s going well for both you and Silver. Please pass on my warmest regards to her.
Sincerely,
Maeve
I feel like I’m being torn straight down the middle, furious and elated, as I leaf through the drawings and sketches in my hand. There must be at least fifty of them, on different sized of paper, some of them on proper thick artist’s stock, while some of the most detailed, lovely pieces were drawn on scrap. I turn over a drawing of my mother with her knees drawn up to her chest, a half-eaten apple held in one of her hands, her hair wild, head tossed back, her mouth open wide as she laughs, only to discover that it was sketched on the back of an overdue invoice for a Bosch Power Drill dated January 29, 1995.
The second I register the way my mother’s laughing, a slew of memories hit me hard like a sledgehammer to the chest. I can barely breathe around them. My mother would sink into the deepest, darkest depths of depression and wouldn’t smile for months. But when the depression didn’t have its claws in her and she was gloriously herself, she smiled a lot. She laughed with her whole body. I hear the breathless, raucous unmistakable sound of her laughter when I look at that picture, and it makes my heart shatter to pieces.
Don’t be sad, passarotto. There’s so much to be happy about. You’re no longer a boy. You’re a man. No, you’re a king amongst men. You have the love of a beautiful woman. I’m so proud of you, mi amore. You’re lighting up the world. Go on. Go out into the world and be great. Be the man I know you can be.
I haven’t heard my mother’s voice in my head for quite a while, I realize. With a heavy dose of sadness that makes my throat throb with emotion, I think that this will be the very last time I hear it. I don’t know how I know that. I just do.
“Wow. Those are spectacular,” Silver whispers behind me, leaning over the back of the couch to look at the drawings over my shoulder. “Holy crap, Giacomo could have earned a living as an artist. What the hell?”
He could have. There was nothing stopping him from becoming an illustrator, or designer, or a freelance artist of some kind. He chose a different path for himself, though—a selfish path tha
t, in the end, benefitted no one. Not even himself.
“She was so lovely, Alex,” Silver says softly. “I really wish I’d gotten to meet her.”
“Yeah.” I run my fingers over another image of my mother, a dull ache pounding in my chest. Mom would have loved Silver. She loved anyone who knew their own mind and wasn’t afraid to say what was on it. And Silver, she would have adored my mother in return. It was impossible not to fall in love with her.
I have so few photos of my mom. There were never many taken, I suppose, and those that did exist were lost when she killed herself and CPS took us away. I was too young to ask what was going to happen to her things. Everything my mother had owned was likely bagged up by her old landlord and taken to a thrift store. Could have been discarded in a dumpster for all I know. Giacomo certainly never came back for any of it.
These pictures are a connection to my mother that I’ve been missing since I was six years old. I don’t give a shit that Giacomo drew them. I’ll cherish them for as long as I live.
Days later, when I come home, Silver’s waiting for me by the door to the apartment, and she’s wearing a look of excitement on her face. She bounces from one foot to the other, clapping her hands over her mouth as I walk in.
I dump my bag at my feet, smirking at her ridiculousness. “Oh my god. You won the lottery. You’re rich now and you’re leaving me to become Billy Joel’s unpaid intern.”
“Psshh. If Billy asked me to be his unpaid intern, I’d dump your ass and be on the road in five seconds flat. I wouldn’t need to win the lottery. Getting to be Billy Joel’s unpaid intern is winning the lottery.”
“All right. Noted. Noted.” She’s still grinning nervously, unable to keep still; I slowly walk around her, making a show of studying her closely. “Nasa called and they’ve invited you to become their youngest ever astronaut.”
