Capitolo Tre

Six Months Ago…

Dominic is close to getting his family’s company back, and Valentina is on break from college. She’s been skipping classes, a lot, and sleeping more. This makes my life easier, but it’s also worrisome.

I suspect it has a lot to do with meeting that man, the one she has contacted several times over the past year and a half.

Sabato Efisto.

When she visited her home for a week last spring, then two weeks in the summer, and again at Christmastime, I know she met up with him on my holiday and days off. However, I do not need to know these things. Dominic sets up protection for her when I am not with her, even when she’s there. She has no blood relatives left, besides Dominic, but home is home I suppose.

Now she’s with them again, and I’m home.

When I’m at home with my family, it’s a habit to check up on her. It’s not like there is much else to do there. My parents are content reading, doing crossword puzzles, making wine from their own small vineyard, gardening, and cooking. They are in bed by nine o’clock every night, while I am accustomed to staying up much later.

There are no clubs here. Anghiari is a small Tuscan town. It’s beautiful, yet dreadfully boring, which is why the home I purchased for them was inexpensive, yet it still has beautiful views. Antoinette, my sister, would have loved it.

After Antoinette’s death, our parents mourned then moved on.

I suppose it’s my fault they didn’t fall into a state of depression or mourn in the manner most do. I’m sure it was difficult that their only living son wasn’t speaking. There was just nothing to say. Nothing could bring her back. We never knew who it was who had broken her heart so badly that she felt the need to take her own life.

Outside my parents’ house, there is a small barn, and inside a locked room in that barn is where I keep some of the things that are important to me.

Unlocking the door to the room with my valuables, I take a deep breath before stepping inside and turning on the light. I look at the boxes that I haven’t opened in years and see the one with the faded “A” written in my handwriting. Walking over, I question why I’m even in here. It comes to me quickly.

Valentina’s moods have been similar to those of Antoinette’s at the beginning.

It was so long ago that I don’t remember what led up to her suicide.

My parents don’t bother coming in here and have never asked what I keep locked up. I’m glad. I wouldn’t want them to see that I had pulled some of her things out of the boxes they donated or threw away.

I lift the box I know has pictures, family pictures, pictures of things I found beautiful. Pictures my sister made me take of her when she was feeling especially pretty.

I set it down and look inside. My old cameras are there. Four of them. An instant camera, two that take film rolls, and the one I received the Christmas before she died, a digital.

I pick it up and look at it, briefly considering maybe taking up photography again. Then I set it down and grab the box with Antoinette’s things.

When I open it, I don’t feel anything. I feel numb. The pain is gone. The questions left unanswered will never be answered, but missing that one person, the one who was most like you, come back.

When she was angry at our parents for being too strict, I listened with understanding. When I entered secondary school, shy and scrawny, giving me the inability to make friends fast, she dragged me to eat lunch with her and her friends.

Dinners were much more entertaining with her. More talk, less silence. She was always talking. Holidays with family were never boring; there was always someone to play with or to share snickers over the awful sweaters Grandmother would give us year after year.

Once, we both tried to out-gush each other over their beauty to our grandmother, which was total bullshit, yet it made her feel wonderful and gave us something to laugh about that evening when the rest of the family was in bed by nine p.m.

Things others didn’t find amusing, or even hysterical, we did. She and I both shared an offbeat sense of humor. Antoinette was my last best friend.

I reach in and grab one of the many journals she kept. Where I loved photography, she loved to draw. The times I would see her sitting, concentrating on a picture I took, while she drew it, always made me feel especially proud.

I sit down on the dusty wooden floor and flip through the book. I don’t get sad. I smile at her memory and what she left behind—her art.

Having watched Valentina mourn her parents’ deaths, still mourn them on the anniversary of the plane crash, their birthdays, and I’m sure major holidays, makes me wonder if we have it wrong by just moving on, that I may be wrong for smiling and thinking about all the good times. Or maybe she has it wrong.

I choose the latter.

Three days later, I say goodbye to my parents and return to Rome, giving myself two days alone before Valentina and the chaos she brings with her returns.

With me is my camera and two of my sister’s journals.