TWENTY-FOUR
Jack
Chiara wasn’t at my side when I woke again.
Dante sat in the chair beside my bed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“Glad to see you’re still with us.” He smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Lifting my head, I glanced around. Aside from Dante, the room was empty. The heart rate monitor beeped a steady rhythm. My body felt heavy and sluggish. My chest ached.
“Where’s Chiara?” I asked, words groggy.
Dante full-on sighed. “Isn’t that the question?”
Alarm flashed through me. “What?!” I struggled to sit up.
“Whoa there, big guy.” Dante was instantly over me, pushing me back down. The heart rate monitor spiked.
“Where’s Chiara?” I asked again, meeting his hazel eyes.
“The police took her in for questioning.”
A pause.
“Why would they do that? I thought they already interrogated her.” I tried to sit up again. Agony lashed my side, forcing me to collapse back.
“They did.” Dante pressed a button and the head of my bed slowly raised upward. “Apparently, this round of questioning is related to the conversation Chiara recorded a few weeks ago.”
“Oh.” I winced, taking a deep breath around the pain in my chest. “When will she be back?” I shifted trying to get comfortable.
“I don’t know. The police didn’t say. Soon, I would expect.”
I relaxed against the bed, breathing through the discomfort.
Soon was good. I could manage soon.
I had a physical body again. And I didn’t want to waste one single moment without Chiara at my side.
My hopes were not realized. Chiara did not return.
The police prosecution of the Tempeste family was significantly more extensive than we had originally supposed. The man that Chiara had overheard agreeing to the assassination of the Senator and his family was one of the more powerful enforcers in the Tempeste organization. The hit man the police arrested only added more fuel to the prosecution’s case.
Unbeknownst to any of us, Chiara was one of the prosecution’s most important witnesses, which explained the multiple attempts on her life. The police felt that the contract out on Chiara’s life had been tamped down, but they were wanting to be cautious, as they had been wrong twice now. More importantly, the prosecutors were concerned that Chiara proved unable to keep her name out of the media, potentially damaging her credibility.
As Inspector Paola put it, “I’ve worked too hard and too long on this case to have it ruined by a sensational, romantic summer fling.”
To that end, the judge requested that Chiara be sequestered until the preliminary hearings were over. Specifically, she was to have no contact with me.
“They need her testimony to be unimpeachable,” Tennyson explained when he called. I was sitting in my hospital room, trying not to crawl out of my skin with worry. “Chiara agreed to their terms because the Tempeste family must be stopped. It’s just for a couple weeks. Once the initial court hearings are done and Chiara has given her testimony, she’ll be free to go.”
Chiara and I would have to wait to discuss our issues. And that was that.
I wish I could say that those few weeks passed quickly. But patience was not one of my virtues. Besides, having a body again, being fully in this world after so long as a ghost . . . it was difficult to absorb.
Ironically, my injury helped. Every twinge and ache and sting reminded me of the frailty of my physical body. Of what I had lost and what I had gained.
Tennyson nursed me back to health at Villa Maledetti. He and I were close friends, so being with him was easy. My physical state didn’t change our friendship much.
Most importantly, Tennyson still couldn’t feel my emotions.
Beside that, nothing more of my time in the shadow world remained. I couldn’t see the rifts anymore. We were unsure as to why. Was it the fact that my body was wholly in this world now? But if so, why was Tennyson unable to sense my emotions? Why hadn’t that part returned as well?
We had no answers.
Life went on without Chiara. Nonna returned from her cruise with a new repertoire of hilarious stories. Lucy was entering the last month of her pregnancy, and Branwell was equal parts euphoric and terrified of the babies arriving too soon.
While recovering and waiting to hear from Chiara, I spent my time exploring Cesare il Pompaso’s ramblings and trying to make heads or tails of the architectural schematic. Once I was more mobile, I surveyed the ruined tower, looking for more clues.
My body healed quickly, modern medicine preventing any secondary infections. Two weeks later found me feeling remarkably better physically. My ribs still ached, but otherwise, I felt as complete as I had in . . . centuries.
How long would it be before I stopped marveling at the blood pumping through my veins? Until the novelty of taste and smell and touch became ordinary?
Despite my physical well-being, I missed Chiara terribly. I missed everything about her. Her laugh. Her spunk. Her endless enthusiasm for life.
I craved her touch. I needed to feel her in my arms. Her curvy body tucked against me. Her breath against my cheek. The light vanilla smell of her perfume. The smooth softness of her hand in mine.
Every day, I wondered—were the police treating her well? Was she lonely? Dante had been allowed to speak with her only once. He said she was doing well. Just catching up on her workload and basically biding her time between court appearances.
How would things be between us when she returned? Did she still feel the same about me? It was one thing to care for someone when the possibility of a real relationship seemed like a distant goal. It was something else entirely to know it could be a reality. The longer we were apart, the more concerned I became. Would she still want me?
For myself, I already knew what I wanted . . . I just needed a chance to convince her of it. I was already planning a campaign. A courtship for the ages. Whatever it took to convince Chiara D’Angelo to spend the rest of her life at my side.
I pondered this as I walked downstairs and into the drawing room of Villa Maledetti, cuffing the sleeves of my shirt.
“Jack!” Chiara jumped up from the couch.
I stopped, all the air punching from my lungs. It had been barely two weeks, but I felt I was seeing her for the first time.
Dark hair loose and curled down her back. Manicured eyebrows over dark, wide eyes. Dressed in leggings and a loose summer shirt. She looked comfy and eminently mussable.
“H-how? Why—” I stammered. Why was she here?
She clasped her hands together. “Just, ya know, in the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop in. Say hello.”
She shifted her feet, adorably uncertain.
“Surprise.” She did little jazz hands next to her waist.
“Chiara.” I breathed her name, still hardly believing that she was here. At last. “What happened? How are you here?”
She shrugged. “The indictments are all over. One of the higher ups in the Tempeste organization took a plea deal in exchange for some damaging testimony, which resulted in several other members opting to plea bargain. Basically, the government swept the case, and they didn’t need me any more. So . . . here I am.”
She lifted her head, pinning me with her chocolate eyes, which then narrowed as she surveyed me from head to toe.
She stared. And stared.
And stared.
She sank into one hip, hand on her waist. “Wow. Just . . . uhm, wow.”
“What?” I looked down at my jeans and form-fitting cream button down before raising my head with a smirk.
As we were about the same height and build, Tennyson had lent me a few clothes until I could get my own. Then he said I should just keep the jeans because, ‘Da-yum, you look good.’
Chiara shook her head.
She did this funny dance thing then. Two steps forward and one back. As if she wanted to run into my arms but felt she didn’t have the right.
That didn’t sit well with me. She had the right, and I wanted her to know it. The sooner, the better. If she wouldn’t come to me, I would go to her.
I stalked forward, stopping two feet in front of her. She held her ground, tilting her face up to mine.
She didn’t reach for me.
I wasn’t sure how to take that fact. Was she unsure of us? She had had two weeks of time to mull over her emotions for me.
I sternly told my own hands not to grab her. Take things slowly. Don’t rush. Go at her pace.
My hands bitterly fought me.
I didn’t like this distance—both literal and emotional—between us.
“How are you?” She swallowed. “Tennyson said you’re feeling a lot better.”
“I am, particularly now that you’re here.” I grinned down at her. “I’m glad they set you free. So . . .” My voice trailed off.
“So . . .” Her tone matched mine.
There was so much to discuss. So much I wanted to say.
“I’ve missed you. Have you missed me?” Obviously, I didn’t do subtlety.
“Jack—”
“Yes? That’s what you’re supposed to say, by the way.” I sent my voice several octaves higher. “ ‘Why, yes, Jack Knight-Snow, I have missed you dreadfully. And, by the way, have I mentioned how devilishly handsome you look in these modern clothes?’ ”
“Jack.” Her voice took on a warning edge, though she pressed her lips firmly together, clearly fighting a smile.
I was absurdly proud of that small smile.
She shook her head and folded her arms, looking away. “This isn’t that simple, Jack.” She stared out the window toward the ruined tower.
My heart sank. No. She couldn’t do this to us. Not now. Not after everything.
There would be an us.
“I think really it is,” I countered.
“I’m the psycho woman who shot you—”
“You cannot still be on that. I thought we were way past it. I’m here because you shot me. I can do this—” My good sense lost the battle with my body. I reached for her hand, tucking my fingers into her palm. “—because you shot me. Please stop beating yourself up over it.”
Electricity hummed at the physical contact. I rubbed my thumb across the back of her impossibly soft skin.
We both stared at our joined hands. It wasn’t enough.
“Come here.” I tugged and she came to me. A tiny bit reluctantly, but she came nonetheless.
Chiara walked into my embrace, wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my chest.
I may have gasped or sighed or something. Because finally holding her again . . . knowing I could hold her all day if I chose . . . without a time limit, without pain . . .
I adored how she fit me. She was the perfect size to cuddle under my chin and press a kiss to the top of her head.
“This is nice,” I murmured against her hair.
She nodded.
“We should do this a lot,” I said.
I thought my words were innocent enough, but Chiara reacted. She stiffened and tensed. Her arms squeezed, causing me to grunt in pain.
“I’m so sorry.” She pulled back quickly. “I forgot about your ribs.”
Grimacing, I stretched, gently holding my side.
“Are you okay?” Her voice was anxious.
Who was this concerned, subdued woman? And what had she done with my Chiara?
I pasted my most mournful look on my face. “I don’t know. I might have to find someone to kiss it better.”
I don’t know what I expected her to do after that comment. Swat my arm? Poke my sore side in retribution?
Kiss me senseless?
I had all but asked her to, after all.
Instead, she simply looked concerned and ignored my comment. “How are you healing? Catch me up on everything.”
Not quite the reaction I was going for. Perhaps we were on shakier ground than I had thought. I needed to not push her, move at her pace.
I would win her over. There would be enough time later to discuss us and our future, preferably together.
To that end, I tugged Chiara over to the couch and sat down beside her.
We chatted about my recovery and her involvement with the Tempeste case. We discussed Cesare il Pompaso’s words and what we intended to do from here.
We talked for several hours, Chiara drifting closer and closer to me, until her shoulder leaned into mine and our knees touched. Having her close . . . it was heaven.
But despite her physical closeness, she carefully steered our conversation away from the one topic that currently interested me most— us.
Chiara
Being with Jack—solid, corporeal Jack—was a potent mix of intense longing and masochistic pain. I loved being with him, hearing his voice, touching him.
Let me repeat that— touching him.
I had nearly gone stir-crazy over the last two weeks, worried about Jack and essentially cut off from the real world. The indictment stuff had been necessary, but it had taken an emotional toll. Too much time in my own brain made me second-guess everything.
I knew that I adored Jack. And he clearly cared about me. But . . . was I the best thing for Jack? He deserved to be with a much better human being than myself.
I mean, Jack had been crazy hot even as a disheveled, Regency-era ghost. But now . . .
My brain short-circuited with that first look—form-fitting shirt with cuffed sleeves, designer jeans with just the right amount of tightness. His dark auburn hair trimmed and styled, his stubble shaved. His eyes impossibly blue.
But more than the sight of him, it was the feel and smell of him that overwhelmed me. He had on some delicious cologne that wrapped around my senses and made my knees go weak. Now leaning against the hard, warm solidity of his body. Gah!
I couldn’t think too much about him, honestly. Because if I did, I would only want more and more of him and no need to add ravisher to my psycho girlfriend resume.
A huge part of me knew we needed to talk. There were things that needed to be said. I had half expected to emerge from my seclusion with the police to find that Jack had decided to part ways with me.
Thankfully he hadn’t. At least, not yet, which gave me hope. Maybe he still wanted to be with me.
But if so, I felt he needed a chance to really choose me, not just be stuck with me because of things that had happened before he got his body back.
I wanted to be Jack’s ultimate choice, not his obligation.
But I was still worried. I was terrible girlfriend material. I had enormous emotional issues I wasn’t sure I was ready to confront. And part of me was afraid of opening up the conversation with Jack, giving him the chance to walk away.
And so like a mature adult . . . I completely avoided the topic and stuffed all my neediness back down that emotional black hole and refused to talk about it.
Instead, I steered the conversation to the odd architectural drawing.
“I have explored the site a bit more,” Jack said, motioning out the open French doors toward the ruined tower. “But I haven’t found anything too unusual.”
“Uhm-hmm,” I agreed in my most non-committal way.
I didn’t look toward the tower. Crazy how much anger I held in my heart for Babbo. I had cried it out the night Jack was shot—correction, the night I shot Jack—but if anything, I had felt only more raw afterwards, not less. Nothing had really been resolved within me.
So I was actually angry instead of sad . . . so what?
If I was moving through the five stages of grief—shock, denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance—then I had been in the Land of Denial for a solid eighteen years. Which meant I might get around to accepting my father’s behavior by the time I retired.
Go me.
“Would you be willing to look at the tower with me?” Jack asked, standing and stretching his hand my way. “I would appreciate your thoughts.”
I grimaced.
Jack noticed my hesitation. “Please, Chiara mia?”
How could I say no?
Sheesh. You shoot a guy once and suddenly he’s got all the power in the relationship.
I rocked to my feet and threaded my hand with Jack’s, letting him pull me outside.
We walked out across the terrace to the garden planted around the fallen stones. The day was typical, sunny Tuscan summer. The flowers bobbed in the slight breeze, rustling against the fallen stones.
My mood spiraled down and down with each step.
Jack paused beside me. “As a ghost, the area here felt . . . heavier.”
“It did?” Huh. Maybe my feelings weren’t entirely driven by my Daddy issues.
“Yes. Actually—” He stopped, thinking. “It felt a lot like the scars. Not as strong, obviously, but similar. Something happened there.”
“Something beyond my father dying?” I had to ask it.
A pause.
“I don’t know, to be honest. Just . . . this place is different from others.”
“Hey, sis.” Tennyson strolled out from the house, joining us. “What are we looking for?”
I turned and shot my brother a soft smile.
I shrugged. “Who knows? Anything could be a clue.”
Jack walked over to the stones, running a hand over a couple of them, bending to look at them more closely.
“This part is fascinating. I never came out here because the area felt odd, so I never noticed it,” he said.
“Noticed what?”
“The stones are a mixture of time periods. So far, I’ve cataloged everything from early Renaissance to Roman to Etruscan. Whoever built this tower, pilfered stone from multiple other sites.”
“That was common practice back then,” I said.
“It was, but I’ve been wanting to explore it further. It’s odd enough to matter.”
We paced around the garden, me trying to avoid bitter, angry, Babbo thoughts . . . with only marginal success. Beyond that, I wasn’t much help. Tennyson and I were obviously amateurs at understanding the complex history of ancient stonework.
Jack, however, was in his element. He scrambled over the fallen stones, brushing them on occasion, gazing at their surface sideways, calling out insights and ideas he had considered over the last few days.
After twenty minutes, Tennyson and I just took a seat, arms folded, content to watch The Jack Show.
“Is he always like this when studying ruins?” I asked as Jack levered himself horizontal to examine an oddly angled block. “I mean, you worked with him all last year on the ocean excavation, right?”
“Yep. This is pretty typical Jack, right here.”
“Hmmm.”
Tennyson looked at me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know.” I waved as Jack raised his head, shooting me a boyish grin. “He’s just really cute when he gets excited about something.”
My brother cringed. “Don’t even start—”
“Well, he is!”
“Have you told him that? That you find him handsome and adorable and very boyfriend-able?”
“Do you ever grow up?”
“I take that as a No.”
“The last thing Jack needs is a psycho like me as his girlfriend.”
“You’re not psycho, Chiara. You can control your crazy. You just choose not to.”
“Har-har.”
“I’m serious!”
I looked at my brother. His glowering, frowny forehead. His disgruntled lips.
Huh. He was serious.
“You love him, Chiara.” Tennyson’s expression softened.
I couldn’t say anything, which was an answer in and of itself.
“You love Jack,” he repeated, “but you’re worried—and rightly so—that your emotional tendency to sabotage a relationship will turn any romance with Jack into a nuclear fireball.”
A beat.
“Did you see that in a vision perchance?” I asked.
“No. You told me.”
“What?”
“Your emotions, Chiara. What’s up with all the anger? You’ve been seething for about an hour now, but it doesn’t feel like it’s directed toward Jack or myself. It’s like you just . . .” His voice trailed off.
“I what?”
He shrugged. “It’s like you really hate this garden. Like the roses and freesia personally piss you off.”
“The roses and freesia do piss me off. The tower ruins anger me.”
“Because of Babbo?”
“YES!”
My answer may have been a little more shouty than I intended. Jack’s head whipped my way, brows confused.
I waved at him. He blinked, smiled and then waved back before crouching down again.
I gritted my teeth, telling myself my anger was stupid. It was serving no good purpose.
“You need let it go, Chiara.” Tennyson’s tone was soft. “The more you hold on to your anger or your misery or whatever, the more it poisons you. You can overcome your emotional issues. You just have to want to heal.”
I grunted. “It’s not that easy.”
“Chiara.” He waited until I turned his way and locked his gaze with mine. “It is that easy. You just have to take a step forward and try.”
I turned away from Tennyson, staring back over the ruins, watching Jack.
I loved Babbo even though I was furious with him.
I thought of the crumpled card the police officer had given me. I hadn’t called the recommended therapist. But I also hadn’t thrown away the business card.
Baby steps.
Time to change the subject.
I shot a glance at Tennyson. “So when are you going to start dating again?”
I bumped his shoulder.
He bumped mine back.
“There will never be a woman for me,” he said.
“How can you be sure?”
“Psychic.” Tennyson tapped his temple. “I see the future, remember?”
I nudged him with my elbow. “Yeah, but you don’t see everything. You’re not omniscient.”
He snorted. “More’s the pity.”
“I’m not giving you a pass on this, Tenn. You need to put yourself out there—”
“Enough, Chiara.” His tone dead serious. “I meant what I said. I’m not cut out for love.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. Of course you are. Remember Lucy? The woman you were crazy about for like . . . ten years?”
“The Lucy currently married to my brother?” His voice was so very dry.
“Tenn—”
He shook his head, exasperated and resigned. “I hurt Lucy by holding on to her for so long. I used her as an emotional crutch. I loved her, but I wasn’t good for her. It was a sick sort of love.”
“So?”
“So . . . I’m bad news for any woman. My outward handicap—” He swept a hand over his missing leg. “—is just a physical symbol of what’s missing inside. Babbo’s descent into madness was horrific for all of us to witness. It nearly destroyed Mom. I can’t do that to a woman I love.”
“Stop. You are doing a lot better lately, and there’s no saying you’ll end up like Babbo.”
“I won’t do it, Chiara. I won’t mess up some poor woman’s life with my horrific issues. I won’t bring children into the world to face the same problems I have. Worse, if I did fall in love, I don’t know that I could be strong enough to walk away. Lucy proved that to me. I love too hard and too deep. If I fell for a woman, I would end up smothering her under the mountain of my obsessive affection. The only solution is to avoid falling in love altogether.”
“Tenn, that’s so emotionally unhealthy, I don’t even know where to start. And you keep calling me out on my issues.”
“No, it’s my reality, Chiara. It’s the best choice out of all the crappy options life has handed me—”
“I may have found something!” Jack’s excited shout interrupted us. He popped up from behind a group of stones, face flushed, eyes bright. “This stone was tucked back here, and I hadn’t really studied it yet. But it might have some text on it. Do we have any paper and charcoal to do a rubbing?”
A short while later, I held a piece of paper over a stone as Jack carefully rubbed a stick of artist charcoal over it.
“These stones are so old and weathered, any engravings are seriously worn,” Jack explained. “Lichen, moss and the weather take such a toll. The rubbing should reveal patterns that are hard to see with the naked eye.”
“What do you think this is?” I asked.
“I have no idea. I just noticed a couple stray mason’s marks on this block and was curious. As I said, most of the tower was built from repurposed stone, so the marks could date from just about any time period.”
Slowly, under his hand, letters appeared, blocky and angularly cut. It was nothing I recognized. The letters were Roman, but the language didn’t appear to be Latin. It certainly wasn’t Italian.
The more the lettering was revealed, the harder Jack’s hands shook.
“Well?” Tennyson asked once Jack sat back on his heels, surveying the entire thing.
Reverently, Jack touched the words. “It’s ancient Etruscan. Let me take this inside and see if I can translate it.”
“Do you think it has any reference at all to old Cesare il Pompaso’s floorplan?” I asked, following at his heels as he crossed the wide terrace to the French doors.
“It’s impossible to say. Etruscan ruins aren’t exactly unusual around here.” Jack hedged, spreading the rubbing onto the games table just inside the drawing room. “Let me decipher it first.”
Tennyson and I exchanged a look and sat ourselves down on the large sofa.
I watched Jack as he worked, scribbling in a notebook, looking up things on his tablet. His hair flopped forward and he threaded his hand into it, mussing it. Sunlight rimmed his strong jaw and the curve of his shoulders. He still used voice commands incessantly, despite having his body again. So things like, ‘Hey Siri, take a note’ broke the silence from time to time. Every now and again, Jack would lift his head and seek my gaze. We’d smile and he’d go back to his work, and I would go back to my creepy staring.
See? Psycho girlfriend.
An hour later, Jack looked up from the rubbing, shaking his head.
“Okay, so I think I have it. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure it makes a ton of sense.” He tapped the rubbing with his pen. “It says, I speak to you from your visions. The sparrow guides the way. I need to do more research, but it’s most likely a dedication to a minor Etruscan god of birds.” Jack tossed his pen down. “Damn. I was hoping it would be something related to Cesare, but I guess not.”
Tennyson ran a hand through his hair. “It is odd. I speak to you from your visions. The sparrow guides the way.”
The words slammed into me with all the subtlety of a freight train. I gasped and collapsed back against the couch, a hand clutched over my heart.
Dimly, I heard Jack calling my name.
“Chiara? Chiara!”
But I was lost.
Vision after vision crashed through my frozen brain. Stuttering like a glitching movie reel, snapping between each scene.
Snap.
Jack watching Hamlet in an old London theater, a sparrow dive bombing Polonius as he said, ‘Though this be madness, yet there is a method in’t.’
The madness is not what it seems.
Snap.
A sparrow caught in the conservatory with Sofia D’Angelo—trapped between the house itself and the outside world—frantic to find its freedom.
I am trapped.
Snap.
Watching MST 3000 with my brothers and Babbo, the sparrow darting into the house, sitting on the television as the actors on screen worked to zip shut a pod-like structure.
Jack’s sister, Catharine, holding up her ripped hem, telling her brother she had to mend it.
The cut must be closed.
Snap.
Babbo looking at me, a sparrow by his side. I will always love you, mia passerotta. No matter what. Never forget it.
Snap.
The scenes rushed together, one after another, over and over.
Words tumbled from my mouth.
“The madness is not what it seems. I am trapped. The cut must be closed. I will always love you, my little sparrow.”
The words Cesare spoke through me in Riomaggiore lasered through my mind. Trova il potere. Chiude il lampo.
Find the power. Stop the lightning.
Only this time, I understood them differently.
Oh.
We had all been so impossibly blind. So incredibly stupid.
Trova il potere. Find the power. Yes.
But—
Lampo.
All along, Babbo had been using the Italian word, lampo. It did mean lightning or flash, but its secondary meaning was a shortened version of chiusura lampo.
Zipper.
To close something in a flash.
Chuide il lampo. Close the zipper.
That was it.
Find the power. Close the zipper.
But why? Why did we need to close the zipper and stop the scars from rifting? Jack was corporeal now. The Chucky-slime couldn’t hurt him.
Another vision flooded me.
Dante. Branwell. Tennyson. They stood shoulder to shoulder, facing me. Behind them, stood our father, Cesare. Behind him, my grandfather, Alessio. Men stretched behind them all, fading into the distance. Into the past.
An oily blackness clung to the men, my father and grandfather. The black sludge covered them, turning their skin sallow, sucking their life away. Chucky-slime?
But the slimy darkness struggled to stick to my brothers. It roiled and pulsed around them, but they brushed it off. Something about them made it harder for the shadow to attack.
As I watched, my brothers gathered the oily sludge into their hands and pushed it behind them, their hands struggling to hold the darkness back.
If only they had a way to close themselves off from it—
I suddenly understood.
The madness is not what it seems.
Closing the rip would seal my brothers from the madness. The Chucky-slime was the madness.
Stopping it would break the curse of their GUTs.
The vision faded. But the intense sense of rightness remained.
That was what Cesare—both of them, I supposed—had been trying to tell us.
There was a way to stop the madness. We simply had to permanently close the scars in reality, stopping them from rifting open and seal the Chucky-slime away from my family.
Was that what my father had been chasing that fateful night? A way to seal the scars and break the horrid curse that threatened to destroy his three sons?
Had he done something to help us? Had his rejection of me not been a rejection at all? But, instead, a determination to help us in the only way he could?
I replayed Babbo’s final moments—him on the tower, me calling from the back terrace. The rain pounding between us, the whipping wind.
Babbo’s eyes finding mine, intent, purposeful.
Stay, Daddy. Stay.
But this time, instead of reading his eyes as unfeeling and uncaring, I saw determination. I saw compassion.
I saw heart-wrenching, blindingly-determined love.
The powerful, soul-shaking love of a father for his children.
All his children.
Children he would do anything, sacrifice anything—including his own life—to help.
I hiccupped, sobs tearing from me. I crumpled into a ball, arms around my head.
My heart struggled to absorb the implications of this.
But that persistent sense of rightness wouldn’t leave me.
The events of that night on the tower were not what any of us had thought. Babbo, in his infinite love, had been trying to save us.
Had he even really committed suicide in the end? Or had his death been the accidental result of him trying to permanently close the scars? Obviously, as the curse and madness persisted, whatever Babbo had attempted hadn’t worked.
But he tried. He had given his life trying to save us.
A liquid warmth flooded through my soul, washing away every last ounce of anger toward my father.
Strong arms encircled me. First Tennyson. Then Jack.
I snuggled into them, letting the emotion course through me, burrowing into the arms of the men I loved.
Somehow, though, in the midst of it all, a third pair of arms came around me. A subtle whiff of Babbo’s cologne. The sense of fluttery bird wings against my mind.
And love. Suffocating, overwhelming love.
I will always love you, my little sparrow.
In my mind’s eye, I saw a sparrow soar into the heavens, spiraling into the light of the sun. Beautiful. Free. The light caught the bird’s small wings, turning them from simple brown to flashing gold, burnished and glistening.
And I knew . . .
This was how Babbo saw me. Not as a plain, small bird, but as a magnificent creature capable of rising to any height.
A phantom kiss brushed my forehead. A hand ruffled my hair.
I will always love you, my little sparrow.
I melted into it, releasing years of heartache and pain into the arms of a father who had always loved me.