Disenchanted Read online

  “Banana.”

  “Who is banana?”

  Gavi guffawed. “You always say it wrong! It’s banana who!”

  “My apologies, signor.” The man gave me a playful wink, making me frown. “Banana who?”

  “Knock, knock,” Gavi said again.

  “I said who is there?”

  “Banana.”

  “You already said banana.”

  He had to be playing dumb, which further irritated me. Everyone in the world knew the banana knock-knock joke, or some variation of it. The kids were thoroughly entertained by Marco’s stupidity, though.

  “No, no! Say banana who!”

  “Oh, okay. Banana who?”

  “Knock knock!”

  “Uh. Who is at the door?”

  “Banana.”

  Marco glanced at the child in the rearview mirror with exaggerated confusion on his face. Mouth open, eyebrows raised high. “Banana who?”

  “Knock-knock!”

  “Who is there?” He pretended to yell in frustration. “You keep knocking on my door!”

  The kids giggled. “Orange!”

  “Orange who?”

  “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”

  It wasn’t funny. It was possibly the worst knock-knock joke on the planet, but still, Marco and Gavi cracked up. I huffed and crossed my arms.

  “Are we almost there?”

  My chauffer showed me that damn smirk. “You seem a little stressed out. A good foot rub always does it for your sister. Would you like me to rub your feet when we get to the penthouse?”

  “Yeah, Mommy. Your leg always hurts.”

  I turned my head toward my son and softened my tone. “Thank you for caring, Gav, but Mommy doesn’t need Mr. Mangini to rub her leg.”

  Mommy needed Mr. Mangini to take a dive off a cliff. That’s what Mommy needed.

  Marco grinned. “It will be my pleasure to rub you. I am at your service, Mia Signora.”

  I glared at him, even as I forced a tight smile for the kids’ sake. “I do not now, nor will I ever, have a need or a desire for your…services.”

  He continued to grin but returned his attention to my children for the rest of the trip as the knock-knock jokes continued. I went back to gazing out the window, my eyes searching for familiar sights.

  The last time I was in Philly, my husband, Gavin, had still been alive, and he had still belonged to Lily. I supposed that even though she didn’t know it, he had belonged to her until the end.

  That was many years ago, though. I’d changed in too many ways to quantify. I was almost a completely different person, but Philadelphia was much like it had been back then. There was just as much traffic, if not more, and there was still that layer of grayish-blue film in the sky. The natives didn’t really notice it, and they would defend their city and its smog harshly if someone was crazy enough to mention it.

  The city was mostly the same, which was almost comforting in a way, but Lily’s home was drastically different. A lifetime ago, she and Gavin Sr. shared a tiny piece-of-shit apartment in the University City neighborhood of Philly. Now she lived in what could’ve been a spread from a magazine for the wealthy and famous.

  When I walked into the penthouse, my jaw dropped. I couldn’t help it. I’d known Lily had moved into Kyle’s home, but my mind had not been able to generate an image grand enough to give me a good sense of what a penthouse would be like. It was enormous, and that was only what I could see from the foyer.

  Gavi gasped as his little head swiveled back and forth. “Whoa.”

  I felt his childlike awe as I pushed my cap off my head. Lil and I had grown up in low income apartments, and neither of us hit the lottery or made big bucks when we got older. What her reaction had been upon coming into this place the first time, I didn’t know, but Lily had never been very impressed by opulence in the past. I would’ve liked to play it cool as I imagined my sister had done, knowing her, but as we moved deeper into the house, it was hard to mask my wonder.

  The furniture was all high-end, and it was beautifully decorated, but my eyes were continuously drawn to the wall of glass opposite the door we’d come through. I felt myself shuffling over, my gaze trying to take in the breathtaking view of the Ben Franklin Bridge spanning the Delaware River and the outline of the city.

  I stared at the bridge as I remembered the time Lily and I decided it would be a good idea to walk across it. It hadn’t seemed like it was that long of a trek, but by the time we’d made it to the other side into New Jersey, we’d both been giddy with relief, especially since hiking a few hundred feet over a river had actually been rather terrifying. We’d stood at the base of the bridge, staring at it with apprehension and exhaustion. Lily had asked if I was ready for the return trip.

  “Fuck that. We’ll take the bus.”

  Gavin and I had walked over the Golden Gate Bridge when Gavi was a baby, and that hadn’t been terrifying at all. I remembered that day well. It was so clear in my mind, I could still feel the warmth of the California sun on my face and shoulders, hear the cars as they passed by, and I could still feel Gavin’s kiss. He had kissed me like he’d meant it, as if he’d loved and cherished me. A few months later, he was gone, his life snuffed out.

  “May I show you to your room, Mia Signora?”

  Startled from my memories, I turned to the owner of that cultured voice, surprised to find him only a foot or so behind me. It took me way too long to move my gaze past him, only to find the area empty. My family had vanished, but my back had only been turned for a moment. A couple minutes at most.

  Marco must’ve sensed my anxiety, because he wiped that smirk off his face and gestured toward the stairs. “I already showed your mom and the children to their rooms. Your mom has her own room. Cora and Gavin Jr. will share a room, but I thought you’d like to keep Amanda with you. She just went upstairs for the tour. And a diaper change.”

  I tried to hide my relief. It wasn’t that I believed that they had literally disappeared, been swallowed up by thin air or kidnapped by ninjas. My concern lay in the fact that I had let my guard down long enough for a noisy bunch to have left the room without my notice.

  Glancing back at the window, I wondered how long I had really been over there. Again, Marco seemed to know what I was thinking.

  “You seemed to need a moment to unwind. Your mother and I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “How long was I standing there?” I thought I’d only been there for a moment.

  “Almost ten minutes.”

  I instantly felt bad for ignoring my family for those ten minutes, for ignoring the reason we were here to begin with.

  “Okay. Show me to my room.”

  With a growing, yet hidden foreboding, I thought Marco was going to lead me up the wide, long stairs at the center of the house. However, when he instead began to lead me down a hallway on the first floor, I bristled and came to a halt in the middle of a long hall.

  “Why is my room down here? I can go upstairs with the rest of my family. I told you I’m not completely crippled.”

  Marco’s sigh was one of slipping patience. He stared at me for several seconds, his face lacking any emotion.

  “When Lily told me about you, she left out the part about you being self-centered. You really believe everything is about you.”

  I wished that my legs worked, like Chuck Norris’s legs. I would’ve kicked Marco Mangini square in his perfect jaw. Before I could say anything, or even attempt to perform any kind of Chuck Norris violence, he continued.

  “You will be sleeping in the guest wing down here because your sister will be sleeping in the guest wing as well. I know the two of you did not speak for many years, but you must be aware of Lillian’s hard head. Kyle decided it would be best if she relocated to the first floor for the rest of the pregnancy. He doesn’t want her navigating the stairs. We are putting you as close to your sister as you can get without sharing a bed with her and Kyle.”

  He began to turn
away but stopped and returned his attention to me, his sapphire eyes glittering like shiny daggers.

  “But then again, you do not mind that so much, no?”

  He continued down the hall, leaving me stunned and…ashamed. I felt that same old shame I’d lived with for the past nine years, but also, I felt it because Marco had been right. I’d been completely self-centered. Not at any time had any of this been about me.

  Slowly, giving myself enough time to school my features into indifference, I hitched my way through the door Marco had walked through moments before.

  Chapter Three

  I was at Gavin’s funeral, sitting in the front pew of the church. As I gazed around at the stained-glass windows with depictions of lambs and robed men and yellow rays of sunlight, I wondered why we were in a church. Gavin and I hadn’t been religious, and neither had our parents, but there we were, in a church, with his casket situated a few feet away from a statue of a man pinned to a cross.

  As if reading my mind, the person beside me asked, “Why are we in a church?”

  I turned toward the voice. I should’ve been terrified by his appearance, but I was just confused as I stared at Gavin. “Why are you here?”

  “Exactly what I’m asking.”

  I gestured helplessly at the casket. “I mean, you’re dead. You’re not supposed to be sitting here.”

  He regarded me with an angry frown, his eyebrows pulled together with perplexity. “I’m not dead, Lydia.”

  He didn’t look dead. He just looked like Gavin. I started to wonder if there was some mistake, but then Cliff, Gavin’s dad, leaned in between us from his pew.

  “Son, why are you sitting there? You died.”

  More people, many familiar, some not, piped in and told Gavin he was dead. He didn’t believe us.

  “Go see for yourself.” I pointed at his casket.

  Without hesitation, he rose and went to the casket. It was closed, of course, because the accident had been horrific. He’d been unrecognizable afterward. Gavin lifted the lid, and when he saw himself lying there, without any life in him, just…dead…he began to cry. They were the most heart-wrenching sobs I’d ever heard.

  After some time, he glanced back at me, scowling. His face was wet with tears and snot and…blood. He shouted something at me, but it was as if someone had pressed mute. I saw his mouth move, but I didn’t hear him anymore. I could only watch as he shouted the same thing over and over, and cracks appeared in his head and face, skin peeled away, and the blood flowed like his tears. Confused, I tried to focus on the words he shouted, even as a tooth tumbled out of his mouth and he began to sink to the floor, his broken body making itself manifest. Finally, the words began to come through. Muffled at first, but then…then I heard them. The shout. The accusation.

  “Where are my kids?”

  Panic began to set in as I answered him with a tremulous voice. “In the car.”

  They were in the car. The same car that was wrecked with parts of it scattered across the road, entangled with the other cars. Smashed to nothing but chunks of metal.

  Gavin’s shouts echoed throughout the cavernous church. “Where are my kids?”

  I tried to stand up so I could go get them, but my leg was a mangled mess. I didn’t even notice the pain until just then, the excruciating, blinding pain. I tried to tell Gavin where the kids were so he could go get them, but he just kept screaming the same question over and over, and I kept screaming to him and trying to get up.

  But he couldn’t hear me, because he was dead.

  The nightmare flung me into the real world, heart thundering, gasping for air. I covered my mouth to muffle the scream that had followed me. I fumbled for the light with a shaking hand and was relieved to see that Mandy was right where she was supposed to be.

  I touched her face and hair and rested my hand on her back so I could feel her breathe, feel that she was alive and fine.

  The nightmares had been frequent and intense in the beginning, in the weeks following the accident and Gavin’s death a little more than a year ago. The dreamworld horrors varied but shared many of the same elements. The dreams where my kids were hurt or missing—or worse—were always the hardest to shake.

  As my heart calmed and my breathing returned to normal, I became aware of the pain in my leg. I’d felt it in the dream. Sometimes I dreamed that I was in pain only to wake up and discover it was true. It had been hurting before I’d managed to fall asleep. With a bit of injury to my pride, I had to admit to myself that I’d overdone it during the day.

  After Marco had shown me to my room, I’d gone into Mom mode. The kids needed to eat. I had to remind Mom to take her meds. Bags needed to be unpacked for easy access to our necessities. There was a trip to the grocery store with Tagher at the wheel, dinner cooked, and then bath times and bedtimes. I’d even done the unthinkable and climbed every damn one of the twenty-five steps to the second floor. Going back down had been terrifying, even more so with Marco watching me out of the corner of his eye from where he’d stood at the bar, drinking from a crystal glass.

  I sighed with exasperation as I thought of him. I didn’t get it—didn’t get him. Maybe I was imagining things, but I thought I felt him watching me several times throughout the day. In fact, I’d caught him doing so. It wasn’t the kind of stares I was used to, the kind I got from people when the only reason I’d caught their attention was because of the way I walked. No, Marco seemed to watch me as if he could see me from the inside out, as if I walked around with my heart and soul literally bared on my sleeve. It irritated the fuck out of me and made me grudgingly curious.

  He did seem to understand to keep his distance from me, though, or maybe he was just using that distance to study me, but for everyone else, it was like they were all old friends and hadn’t just met hours ago. My mom constantly blushed and touched her hair when Marco spoke to her, which made me want to throw up with loud gagging noises. Unbelievable. And my kids, the little traitors, were all over the guy. Literally. At one point, the man had become a human jungle gym. Even little two-year-old Mandy had enjoyed jumping on his back after she’d awaken from a nap.

  “Don’t you think it’s a little weird that this grown man likes little kids so much?” I’d asked my mom in a whisper. “It’s creepy. What if he’s…you know…like that?”

  Mom had rolled her eyes. “No, it’s not weird. He has a bunch nieces and nephews back in Italy. I think he misses them.” For a second, I thought she was going to go over and hug him and make him a cup of hot cocoa or something. “Besides, both Kyle and Lily assured us that we can trust him.”

  “Not for nothing, Mom, but Lily is in the hospital because of a madman that she had probably thought was harmless, and Kyle and Giacomo Casanova over there let it happen. I’m not sure I can go by any of their reassurances.”

  My mother’s hard glare and her flattened lips made me close my mouth, keep it shut, and go on about my busy day.

  After I’d gotten Amanda to sleep in the guest room, I’d meant to go back out to the kitchen and get something quick to eat. The concern for my sister, and the anxiety of being away from home for the first time since Gavin’s death, had put me on edge earlier, and I hadn’t eaten dinner with everyone else. I still wasn’t hungry, even though I hadn’t eaten since…well, I couldn’t remember. I’d been too anxious to eat at breakfast, too.

  I wasn’t stupid. Not feeding my body only weakened me, and I didn’t need to be any weaker than I was. I could turn my mind and emotions off long enough to stuff some food in my mouth, chew it, and swallow it.

  I touched Mandy’s hair once more and climbed off the bed. As soon as I stood up, the pain quadrupled. My leg hadn’t hurt so much in months, but still, I pushed myself to the door. My pride, even in my own head, was a ridiculous thing. I should’ve stayed in bed and popped a pain pill, but it was like I had to prove to myself that I could make it to the kitchen.

  Well…I didn’t make it to the kitchen. Only a few steps into the dimly lit
hall, I just couldn’t do it anymore. Couldn’t make my damn leg take another step. Couldn’t hold myself up. Feeling very much like a lame horse, I ungracefully slid to the floor.

  I was just going to sit there for a little while, until the spasms stopped, or until I found the energy to get to my feet again, or to crawl back to the guest room. The good news was no one would find me there like that—there was no one to offer me their pity. Mom, Gavi, and Cora were already asleep. The ox had left a couple hours ago, and Marco…well, I had no idea where Marco was. He had “stepped out” right after I’d put the kids down. I’d overheard him tell my mom he had a place not too far away. That’s where he needed to be, in my opinion. Not here, babysitting a bunch of women. I was more than capable of taking care of us on my own.

  You’re sitting on the floor like a broken doll, a small, evil voice said softly in my head. You can’t even take care of you.

  I don’t know how long I sat there before I heard it, the unmistakable sounds of bare feet on the hardwood floor. It could only be one person, and I cursed in my head as I imagined what he might say or do if he found me. There was no use in trying to get up. It would take a long time, and by the way my muscles were jumping around in my leg, I wasn’t even sure if I’d be able to stand on it.

  I knew when he spotted me, because his footsteps faltered for a moment. I expected…well, I didn’t know what to expect from the man. My whole body tensed as I waited for a sarcastic comment, or for his pity, but Marco Mangini’s face was blank, and he said nothing as he crossed the distance between us and his big body eased down next to mine.

  It took me a few seconds to realize he held a bottle of something in one hand, and the same glass he’d had earlier in the other. Without a word, he refilled the glass and offered it to me. I hadn’t had a drink since before the accident, but I was suddenly very anxious. My heart raced, my lungs couldn’t get enough air, and my hands shook. I took the offered drink, uncaring of what it was, and threw it back in one gulp. That was a mistake. I stuck out my tongue and shook my head as my throat burned like hell.