by Alison Kent
“It’s idiot-proof,” she said, lifting a lever that dropped the prepacked capsule of spent grounds into the drawer meant to catch it. Then she opened the cabinet door above, grabbed a new one, and popped it into the slot. “Push the lever down, wait for the flashing light to stop, choose a short or long pull. The other two buttons froth the milk. Or you can do the milk first, and the machine will add the espresso itself. Like I said—”
“Idiot-proof. And we needed this why?” Wait. Had he just said we?
“It’s for the center. I have one at home. I wanted one here. I got tired of your idea of coffee.”
He wasn’t going to argue about that. He was tired of it, too. “You might need to run through that again.”
That earned him an eye roll. “Too sleepy to pay attention?”
“Too busy watching your hair.”
Her mouth pulled tight on one side. “And what was it doing?”
“Bouncing. Or not bouncing, but floating. Like feathers.” Not that he knew a damn thing about women’s hair, so feathers could be insulting, and insulting her was not at all what he’d wanted to do. He liked her hair. Liked how it fit her. Liked that it made her seem… all grown up. As if she’d shed the Luna who’d lived in his head all this time. As if, after ten years, she’d reached the end of her mourning.
She lifted a hand to her nape and fluffed at the sharp ends there falling seamlessly into place. “It’s so strange, feeling air on my neck.”
“I’ll bet,” he said, really liking her neck.
“And I didn’t wake myself up even once last night pulling my own hair. That’s a first.” She set a new latte mug beneath the machine’s spouts and went about brewing him a cup while he watched, while he thought about sleeping with her, getting wrapped up in her hair. “Thank you, by the way. For letting Francisco stay with you.”
He leaned against the counter, his hands at his hips curled over the edge. “He doesn’t snore. He doesn’t take up much room. But that comforter’s going to need an old-fashioned clothesline beating. He loses half his hair every time he shakes.”
She handed him his coffee just as said dog scratched at the back door. “Depending on the reworked plans for the center, we’ll have to find someplace for a doggie door. Letting this one in and out all the time is going to get old.”
And now she’d said it. We’ll. Not I. A slip, he was certain, because she couldn’t really imagine he was going to stay. Though she had asked him about doing so. And he had let the idea of doing so linger. “Shirking your responsibility already?”
Pulling open the door, she stuck out her tongue. Frank scrambled into the kitchen to his food bowl. Angelo set down his mug and scooped out the dog’s breakfast from the bag he’d picked up the other night and stored in the pantry. Luna brewed herself another coffee and carried it to the table, where a box from Butters Bakery sat.
He joined her, like they were some sort of couple, drinking their coffee together while watching their dog eat. He liked it. Too much, probably.
“Sierra would’ve loved having a dog,” she said, breaking open a blueberry muffin.
His stomach rumbled. He chose apple cinnamon. “And you know that how?”
“Because she loved Maya. And Maya loved her. She’d curl up in her lap and stay there as long as Sierra would let her.”
He popped a chunk of muffin into his mouth and watched Frank gobble his way through his kibbles. “Six kids, both parents self-employed, meaning no steady income. The maintenance on this house and the land. Affording a dog would’ve meant one of the kids going hungry. Most likely me.”
She sputtered. “Why you?”
“Just the way things worked,” he said, and shrugged. “The younger kids needed more help and attention. Sierra took up a lot of the family’s time. I was pretty independent by the time I was twelve. Before that even. Not complaining. I had everything I needed. I just had to do more for myself than the others.”
“You never said anything. Sierra never said anything—”
He shrugged it off. “She wouldn’t have known. She was busy being… Sierra.”
Luna cocked her head to one side, her hair grazing her chin. “Are we having a pity party?”
“Hardly.” Though he’d feared she would think that. It was hard to explain. “She lived in her own world. You were her best friend. You had to see that.”
“I suppose.”
Was this Luna’s selective memory, or a girl thing? He couldn’t believe she wouldn’t have noticed. Or had Sierra, with Luna, not been the same person she’d been at home? “You had to ask her a question twice or even three times before she heard, never mind getting an answer before she fell back into whatever she’d been thinking. She said she’d do something, like take out the trash for me when I was running late for practice, but never did, so I got in trouble, even though I’d cleaned the upstairs toilet for her.”
“Did that bother you? The getting in trouble?”
No. That wasn’t what had bothered him. “It got old, was all. I quit asking her to switch chores. Or asking her for much of anything. Hard to rely on someone whose head is always someplace else.”
“Sounds like it did bother you.” She looked down, picked at her muffin. “Or like you resented her.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to think so, but…” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, coffee mug cradled in his palms. “It was more that I just wanted to get out of the house, be on my own. Not have to deal with the constant Sierra drama.” He couldn’t believe he was admitting this. He could not believe he was sharing his feelings with the girl who’d been his sister’s best friend.
Especially the things he was ashamed to have ever felt. He hadn’t been ashamed at the time, and he wasn’t even sure he’d been ashamed after leaving. And that was as bad as accepting that he hadn’t thought about his family much once he’d left home.
“She relied on you.” When he didn’t respond, she went on, pushing. “You know that, right?”
“She shouldn’t have,” he said, then lifted his mug to drink.
“You were her brother. You are her brother. Of course she should—”
“She needed me to come home. I didn’t come home.”
“Angelo—”
“No, Luna. I let her down. God—” It was a prayer for forgiveness, his use of the Lord’s name, even though he would never be able to forgive himself. He left his mug on the table, walked to the back door, pushed it open when Frank came up and asked to go out again, and watched the dog snuffle his way through the yard.
“It wasn’t just that I wouldn’t come home. It was what I said to her. The words. How I said them. I kept cutting her off. Yelling at her.” He turned to look at Luna, her eyes wide and filled with so much sadness he wanted to slam his fist through the wall for putting it there. “She was trying to tell me something, but I wouldn’t let her.”
“Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“A jerk.”
“Because I like my life now without having five kids in my business all the time?”
“That’s not nice. Or fair. None of us asked for this family. You and I got stuck. We’re the oldest. It happens.”
“I’m done with it happening.”
“Angelo, listen to me—”
“No. You listen to me. I’m going to Rome. That’s the only trip I’m taking this year. I’m not even sure I’ll make it home at Christmas.”
“Please, listen—”
“Sorry, sis. No can do.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” she said, her throat working as she swallowed.
“I hung up on her, Luna. How is that not bad?”
She flinched. A quick jerk of her shoulders and head. “She never told me. She told me everything that summer. But she never told me that.”
“And what does that say, huh? She obviously didn’t want you to know.”
“Why wouldn’t she want me to know?”
“Becaus
e the last thing I told my sister was that she needed to grow up. That she needed to stop expecting everyone else to do her dirty work. That if she was old enough to spread her legs, then she was old enough to deal with being so irresponsible that she didn’t make the Gatlin kid use a condom. And if she was old enough to get pregnant, then she was old enough to tell our parents without me holding her hand while she did.”
“She didn’t need you to hold her hand.”
“You don’t think I don’t know that? What she needed or didn’t need doesn’t matter. The last words I said to my sister were, ‘Grow up.’ Then I hung up. I didn’t say good-bye.” He slammed his palm against the screen door. It flew open and bounced against the wall. “I didn’t say good-bye.”
He carried the fact that he hadn’t out the door and into the morning sun. It shone down brightly to warm him, when he didn’t deserve warmth anymore than he deserved light. He didn’t deserve anything more than what guilt handed him.
He could have saved his sister’s life.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Luna spent most of the morning second-guessing everything she did around the house. Mostly because she didn’t remember what she’d been doing and had to retrace her steps. Her mind was not on any of her tasks—not on emptying the living room’s shelves and drawers, which she’d finally finished, not on climbing into the attic a half dozen times to bring down stored boxes, which she’d also done. Not on tossing out the complete waste of fabric stored in Carlita Caffey’s sewing room, fabrics that had been shredded into nests for squirrels and rats.
Her mind was on Angelo’s pain.
Of course he and his family had suffered. They’d lost their family’s heart. But not realizing that Sierra had called him, what she’d asked from him—and worse, what he’d said to her—Luna had no idea the weight of the burden he’d carried. A weight thick with guilt and regrets even more debilitating than those that had bound her to the past for so long. She couldn’t imagine having lived with those words echoing in his head all this time. Even now, her chest was so tight she had to stop at the bottom of the stairs to catch her breath.
She didn’t know where Angelo was. She hadn’t seen him since he’d walked out of the kitchen earlier. She’d wanted to follow, but she was still reeling from what he’d told her. Those words… She couldn’t even imagine them coming out of his mouth, and he’d said them to his sister? His then seventeen-year-old pregnant sister? His sister who’d needed him to help her through the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life?
It was so not like the Angelo Luna had known during her high school years. Granted, they’d had very little time together before Sierra’s death, a year and a half at the most. But not once during those months, or the two years following the funeral, had he been anything but kind when he spoke of Sierra. Even now, Luna didn’t doubt his affection for his sister had been anything but real. She only wished she understood what would’ve caused him to lash out.
She moved to the door of Sierra’s room. Neither she nor Angelo had yet crossed the threshold, as if this room were where all of his sister’s secrets were kept. As if entering would break some sort of imaginary seal that had kept her memory alive. As if doing so were a sin, a sacrilege. And yet here he was, sitting at her vanity table, her mirror giving Luna two Angelos to look at as she stood in the door.
She studied the one who lived and breathed. “I wondered where you’d gone.”
He looked up at her, his eyes bleary, appearing drunk when she knew that wasn’t the case at all. “Everything is still here. Nothing’s been touched since that weekend.” He reached behind him, picked up a bowl and a spoon from the vanity. “This is her cereal bowl. This would’ve been the last meal she ate in this house. You came by that morning to pick her up for school. After school, the two of you were supposedly headed to art camp in San Marcos. The next time she was in this house, she was dead.”
Luna closed her eyes against the rising rush of tears, opened them again, and walked in to be assailed by memories. How many nights had she slept in this room, either bunking on the floor or crammed with Sierra into her twin bed? They hadn’t cared how crowded they were, how little sleep they got. They’d talked and laughed, tried out makeup, painted each other’s nails. Sierra had put braids in Luna’s hair and looped them all over her head. Luna had done the same for Sierra, and they’d danced like the best of Bollywood.
She walked to the vanity, picked up the plain black frame holding a five-by-seven photo of Oscar. It was the official St. Thomas Preparatory School portrait taken at the end of their junior year. Luna’s own portrait sat on the mantel in her parents’ den. She’d packed away Sierra’s when cleaning the living room shelves just yesterday.
“They… got married,” she heard herself saying before she could stop the flow of the words, and she mentally begged Sierra’s forgiveness. In her peripheral vision, she saw Angelo lift his head. “Friday morning before the baby was delivered that afternoon.”
“What do you mean, married?” he asked, breathing heavily, his nostrils flaring.
“I mean married. Man and wife. Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Gatlin.”
“You were there?” he asked, and she nodded.
“They were very, very much in love, Angel.” She returned the frame to the table and looked at him. “You know they were.”
“What I know is that she should never have gone to St. Thomas.” He stopped, flung the spoon and bowl across the room. The bowl shattered, the shards scattering, the spoon clattered, and Luna flinched. “That school ruined her life.”
She backed up to sit on the foot of the bed. “How can you say that?”
“Easy. It’s the truth.”
“She had an amazing talent. You can’t deny that.”
“I’m not denying her talent, but she could’ve continued to study with Mr. Miyazawa. She didn’t need any of what St. Thomas offered. She sure as hell didn’t need Oscar Gatlin.”
“Without St. Thomas, she never would’ve met Oscar. And I would never have met her.” I wouldn’t have met you either. “I don’t even want to think what high school would’ve been like without her.”
“You’d have survived. You’ve survived since.”
“Sometimes I’m not so sure,” she said, wanting to take back the words. What she’d gone through didn’t matter when compared to this man’s loss.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Luna? What do you mean?”
She tore off the rest of the bandage. “Look at me, Angel. I’m twenty-eight years old and only just now moving out of my parents’ home. When I was confined to bed after the accident, my mother brought me a loom. I’ve done nothing else with my life. Nothing. It’s like if I take a step out of that world, I’ll lose Sierra forever.”
“Sierra’s been gone for ten years, Luna. You lost her… we lost her a long time ago.”
He was right, but even knowing that, she couldn’t bring herself to make the break. “My head knows that. My heart can’t let her go.”
“You don’t have to let her go. I think about her daily, yet I’ve moved on with my life.”
“Have you?” she asked, before she could stop the words from spilling.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, his frown deep.
“You’re hiding away in Vermont. Out of touch with your family—”
“Hey, that’s on them, not me.”
“Have you tried to contact them? Have you made any effort at all to make amends?”
“Because I’m the one who needs to?” His eyes were wide and wild. “You were there that day. You know what happened.”
“No, Angelo,” she said. “You would’ve had to talk to me for me to know.”
His jaw tightened. His gaze grew hard before he dropped it to the floor, staring down, flexing his hands, his elbows on his knees. “Teenagers.” He bit off a rush of sharp words beneath his breath. “Married.”
He wanted to change the subje
ct? Fine. “Their bond was stronger than I’ve seen in some longtime married couples. They knew what they were facing.”
“How could they know what they were facing?” He barked the question at her. “Who knows anything at eighteen? Sierra was all about her cello. And Oscar… you know the Gatlins wrapped him in swaddling. He probably never had to deal with so much as a hangnail.”
She bristled. He hadn’t known Oscar at all. “You weren’t here to see them. I’m not even sure your parents realized what those two had as a couple—”
“They were eighteen. What did they even know about being a couple?”
Her heart clutched as she thought back to the things she’d felt for Angelo at that age. “You think eighteen-year-olds can’t fall in love?”
“Not those two. They didn’t even live in the real world. All they knew was music.”
The way all she knew was weaving. “They lived music. It’s all they needed to know.”
“I build furniture for a living, Luna. You think I don’t know a little bit about what it’s like to be an artist? Or a craftsman, at least? I’ve never worked a nine-to-five, or left my work at the office, or known what to expect any particular day. I understand immersion. But I also got my degree. Sierra left public school at fifteen, and for three or four years before that, she spent her afternoons and weekends with Mr. Miyazawa. She never even bothered with her driver’s license. How was she in any way equipped to be a wife, much less a mother? And to balance that with any sort of music career? Uh-uh. I can’t see it.”
“She couldn’t see it either. Nor could Oscar. That’s why they made the decision they did. As much as they both wanted to be a family with their child, the timing was all wrong.”
“So you say.”
Oh, he was frustrating. “They were my best friends. I knew them as well as I knew your family.”
“You only know what you saw.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Did you ever hear my parents fight? Did you ever see my father swing his guitar, his guitar, at Felix and Emilio when they were arguing over who had to take out the trash? Were you ever there for dinner when my mother set a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter on the table? No jelly. No milk. No plates or napkins or knives. And that when there was hamburger in the fridge, even tuna and noodles in the pantry. But she wasn’t in the mood to cook.”