3
Rosalia
I wake up in the morning still feeling numb.
For two days now, I've been like this. I've cried a lot, but the whole time, I've felt empty, like I'm crying over something that's not even real. It all still feels like a terrible nightmare—finding my father's body, those moments I spent on the floor next to him, begging him to wake up.
Facing the reality of all this means not just accepting that my father is gone. It means thinking about what comes next, and that's too scary to think about right now. My father shielded me from everything, but now I don't know how much protection I have. Someone will want his position. Maybe it'll be Enzo who takes it. I don't know—and I don't know what that means for me.
I know I don't want to marry Enzo, a man three times my age, who, in my opinion, has nothing going for him in looks or personality. I don't know if I want to marry anyone they might pick for me. I thought I had more time to put off thinking about it. And now—
Standing in front of my closet, staring at the hastily bought black dress for today, I still feel like it's all a horrible dream. I know how the rest of the day will go—the church service, the burial at the cemetery, the gathering later where everyone will say they're sorry for my loss, and the men from the Family will gather in my father's now-perfect study and decide what my life will be like after this. All the independence and choices my father tried to give me will be taken away and replaced with whatever decisions they make for me.
But it doesn't feel real.
I slip into the knee-length black dress, sit down at my vanity to try and do something with my makeup to make me look less like a ghost who's been crying for two days. Nothing I do really helps—and in the end, I decide it doesn't matter. I don't care what anyone else thinks of how I look today.
Except—
I bite my lower lip as Angelo comes back into my thoughts. It's been three years. I hardly remember him. He left when I was too young to remember, and he didn't return until I was a teenager. By then, all I knew was that he was a handsome man who mostly ignored me, despite my wanting his attention. He kept his distance, staying polite when we spoke and hardly interacting with me, even during family meals. Legally, he's my stepbrother, but I can't think of him that way. We didn't grow up together, and I don't really know him.
I haven't been longing for him all these years. I pushed thoughts of him away after he left, and any crush I had faded. But now—
I can't help feeling a small burst of excitement in my chest, breaking through the numbness, at the idea of seeing him again. It makes me want to add some color to my cheeks and choose a flattering lipstick. I want him to see that I've grown up, that I'm different now from whatever he thought of me back then. I know it probably won't matter to him—if he comes at all, it will be to pay his respects and then leave for wherever he lives now, probably not in Chicago.
Still, I can't help but hope I'll see him. I hold onto that hope, because I need all the strength I can get to make it through today.
I end up getting to the church too early. I slip inside, breathing in the familiar, comforting scents around me, and go to sit in the front pew. My stomach clenches on nothing when I see the coffin, nausea filling me even though I haven’t managed to eat anything today. I feel my teeth cutting into my lip again as I blink back tears. I don’t know how I have any left—but they’re already welling up, looking at the wood and brass box that somehow contains my father. I’m dreading the moment they open it up, the moment when I have to see his face and know for certain that none of this is the nightmare that I keep trying to tell myself it still could be.
I’m not sure how long I sit there alone. I’m lost in thought, trying to think of better memories and happier days, and I don’t hear the footsteps coming down the aisle behind me. I don’t hear anything at all, until a voice floats towards me—a voice I recognize.
“Rosalia?”
I know it’s Angelo before I turn to look. I remember his voice, that faint accent learned from my father, the formal way he speaks to me. But his voice is softer and more soothing than I’ve ever heard it turned in my direction before. Something in my chest aches, hearing it, and I blink back more tears before I slowly turn to look at him, steeling myself for whatever it is that I might feel when I see him again.
It’s an effort not to let him see what I’m thinking—at least, I hope he doesn’t. I’m struck by him all over again the moment I see him there—tall and handsome, short dark hair swept away from his face, piercing green eyes looking at me with a softness that I don’t think I’ve ever noticed in them before. He’s dressed immaculately in a tailored suit, all black, his gaze and bearing somber, and he waits for me to speak before he says anything else. He just looks at me, and my mouth goes dry.
“Angelo.” The way I breathe his name isn’t exactly appropriate—not for the day, or where we are, or who we are to each other. But my heart flips in my chest, my pulse picks up in my veins, and I feel that hopeless crush all over again, just like I did when I was fifteen.
He’s sophisticated, and elegant, and beautiful. He’s always made me want things that I shouldn’t. And it seems like three years hasn’t changed a thing.
I get up, slowly, my entire body stiff from having sat in the pew staring at my father’s coffin for so long. Angelo doesn’t move, as still as a hunter in the woods trying not to scare off prey, and I wonder what it is that has him so guarded, besides the fact of having been gone for so long. I walk towards him, stopping just a short distance away, and he almost looks as if he’s had to try not to flinch away from me.
Does he hate me? I can’t think of anything I might have done to make him feel that way. It wouldn’t make sense, really. But his face is still and unreadable.
“I’m glad you came,” I whisper, the sound seeming too loud in the quiet church. “I didn’t know if you would. If anyone would tell you. Or if you’d come even… even if they did.”
“I wouldn’t have missed this.” Angelo’s voice is stiff and formal as he looks down at me, but I hear a slight hesitation. “How are you, Rosalia?”
“I’ve been better.” I bite my lip again, tasting blood; I’ve bitten it so much in the last two days. A small, almost nervous giggle builds up behind my teeth, and I have to swallow it down to avoid embarrassing myself here. I feel like I could lose control at any moment, like the numbness could shatter, and I might fall apart when the reality of it all hits me. I don’t know who I would turn to if that happened. Once, it would have been my father I leaned on for something this awful. But now, I have no one.
“I’ll stay around for a while after the funeral. The Family wants to talk to me, and then…” Angelo pauses. “Well, I’ll be heading back to New York soon. But I’ll make sure you’re okay before I go.”
There’s no clear reason why my stomach sinks a bit upon hearing that. It’s logical that he’s going back to New York—there’s no reason to expect him to stay. I don’t understand why I would feel disappointed to hear he’s going home once all of this is over.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Angelo says quietly, still looking down at me. For a brief moment, I wish I could hear his thoughts. I don’t know why he seems to be avoiding me, as if he wants to leave, with something in his eyes that almost looks like guilt.
“It’s your loss too.” Before I can stop myself, I reach out and touch the back of his hand—and for a moment, our fingers brush before he pulls away.
He steps back, creating more space between us. Further down the church, I hear the wooden doors opening and quiet conversations starting. Angelo’s shoulders tense, and he nods at me.
“I’ll see you after the funeral, Rosalia,” he says formally. “I’m sure the Family will want to talk to me at length, but I’ll come to offer my condolences and check on you again before deciding when I’ll leave.”
Again, there’s no logical reason to feel so empty when he walks away. There’s no cause for that disappointment to return.
I don’t have time to dwell on it, though, as the church begins to fill with others who have come to say goodbye to my father. I’m pulled back into the present moment, into the reality unfolding around me.
Angelo hasn’t been a part of this for a long time. And it seems to me that one way or another, he doesn’t intend to be a part of it now either.