“What am I supposed to do, huh? Tell me.”
“Well, relaxing would be a great way to start, Dante.”
“Tell me how I’m supposed to do that, then!”
“Yelling isn’t helping anyone,” Catherine’s grandfather said.
“Certainly not you,” Catrina added.
Catherine’s father cursed lowly, and then something crashed and shattered into a wall. Hidden in her spot inside the darkened hallway, Catherine jumped at the sudden noise, but she still didn’t move. Antony, her grandfather, grumbled something she couldn’t hear under his breath.
“I liked that vase,” her mother muttered.
“I will buy you a new—”
“It was one of a kind, Dante, you cannot replace it.”
A harsh sigh echoed. “Mi dispiace, Catrina.”
A squeak of leather filled the air and then Catrina said, “I don’t want your apologies. I want you to calm down, Dante.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re really not, son,” Antony said, his aged voice hoarse. “And while I understand, in some ways, I don’t think you should be as surprised or … upset, we’ll say, as you currently are.”
“And why the hell not, Papa?”
“Because you’ve done this where Catherine is concerned. You, and your wife, of course.”
Catrina scoffed. “I have no idea—”
“Less you,” Antony interrupted, “and more him.”
“I did not ask you to come over tonight to give me a lecture,” Dante said with venom. “I asked you here, so I had someone to talk to that I trusted.”
“You had your wife.”
“We’re all talked out.”
“Putting it mildly,” Catrina said.
“You called me because I am your father,” Antony said, “and because I, too, had a difficult child to raise. Although by her age, Giovanni was finally starting to settle. You do want advice. You want me to tell you something that will finally work. I can’t do that, Dante, they’re not the same, and you have raised her this way.”
“What way?”
“To be like she is. Sneaky and sly. She hides things from you all, even when she doesn’t need to be hiding things. She hides her unhappiness or disappointments, which has led her into spiral after spiral of bad behavior and even worse moments.”
“I think that a great deal of that was caused by a certain someone in her life, too.”
“Cross, you mean. The Donati man,” Antony said. “You’re wrong. Stop blaming an easy target because you don’t want to blame her, or even, look in the mirror some days.”
“I didn’t make my daughter do—”
“No, not do. Allow, Dante. You’ve allowed her to continue on with things that someone else would have either stepped in on, or put their foot down altogether.”
“I want her to be happy, Papa.”
“Then you have to allow her to figure that out, son. Without your input. She’s twenty-five, now. It’s a bit late for you to finally put your foot down on something—especially something like love. All her life, you’ve made a conscious effort to take a step back and allow her to decide for herself. It didn’t matter if it was school, running with her cousins, or boys. Well look now, Dante, because she is a grown woman.”
“So?”
“So, she is grown woman who is accustomed to making her own choices now. No, you are not going to have any say regarding her life, or what she does with it. No, she is not going to allow you to lock her down in this house like you did when she was eighteen. No, she is not going to allow your displeasure with her choice of a partner sway how she feels. But you know what she will do, son?”
Dante exhaled heavily. “What?”
“She will lie to you about it. She will hide it from you. She will cover things, sneak things, pretend things, and do whatever else she has to do so that she can be happy, and you can be happy at the same time. It’s a game you both play with one another—her thinking she’s gotten what makes you displeased with her hidden well enough, and you pretending like you don’t actually know what’s going on because she’s happy. Yet, you’re still waiting for the other shoe to drop. That is what she has always done because you have allowed her to do that.”
Antony cleared his throat before he added, “This is your problem, Dante; you have helped to create it. And now you have to deal with it. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Catrina hummed an agreeing sound under her breath.
“Don’t even, Cat,” Dante murmured.
“I have told you this for years, bello.”
“I said not one word.”
“He is right.”
“I know that!”
“Jesus, relax,” Catrina said.
“I know he’s right, Catrina.” Dante’s footsteps followed the long space of the office, from the door and then back to the far wall again. Once, then twice, and finally, a third time. Catherine had never known her father to pace, but that’s what he was doing. “I know he’s right, and you’re right, but what am I supposed to do now? I don’t want it to happen again—that night when I found her like she was, Cat, and how she was for the months that followed.”
“Cara helped her a great deal, bello.”
“Did she?”
“You know she did.”
“Then why have we never spoken even once to Catherine about her sessions with the woman? Why won’t she speak to us about the things that led to all of that? Why?”
“Because we were told by Cara not to ask unless Catherine offered, Dante. That was her request, for Catherine’s sake, and we abided by it. Mental health is a fragile thing; something we learned all too well with Johnathan over the years. Catherine wasn’t any different. That’s why.”
“Fine, but that was then, and this is now. She could just as easily dig herself into another hole. What if this time, I can’t pull her out? What if this time, no one is close enough to hear her shouting for help, Catrina?”
“What if it’s no longer your job to worry about those things?” Antony asked.
“It will always be my job—I am her father!”
“Dante, she is a lot better,” Catrina said quietly, “and she has been this way for a long time. She’s stronger, and happier. With life, with herself. She is not the same girl she was seven years ago. That time has done her wonders, honestly.”
“I’m terrified it’s going to happen again,” she heard her father utter. “That they’ll somehow find themselves in the same situation as last time, but Catherine is far higher this time around. She has a much longer fall before she will hit the ground. We all know how the saying goes, don’t we? The higher you are, the harder you fall. Then, what? What, then, Catrina?”
Catherine’s mother didn’t reply.
“What, then, Papa?” Dante asked Antony when he only got silence from his wife.
Still, no response came.
“So that’s it, right? You expect me to sit back and wait. Wait for the next fall. Wait for the next thing to happen. Wait for the next time I am standing outside a bathroom, begging her to let me in because bloody water is coming out from beneath the door. I should wait for that, I guess.”
“Dante—”
“Just don’t bother, Papa. I was wrong; you can’t possibly understand. This was not your reality with any of us boys, but shame on me for thinking you might understand why I stand where I do.”
“I do understand, but I also think the culture you’ve created between you two through her raising is what has brought you to this point. And unless you deal with that, then this will never be fixed.”
“I did it, then,” Dante said. “That’s what you’re trying to tell me. I was the one who pushed my daughter into the attempt to take her own life. Thank you for that, really. My guilt is already sky-high; adding to it does me wonders, believe that.”
“I didn’t say that … Jesus, Dante.”
Catherine finally decided at that point she had enough of hiding in the hallway. For many reasons, but mostly for her father. He was in pain, and she could hear it clearly. He was suffering, and she was letting him.
Her grandfather was right.
Her mother was right.
Catherine knew, though, that no matter how many times her father heard it told to him by other people he wouldn’t really hear it. It would not register to him as fact or truth. He didn’t need other people telling him things he already knew, but didn’t want to believe. He needed Catherine to do it.
He also needed her to be okay.
To say she was okay.
That she would be.
From the moment she had gotten into that waiting town car, and was delivered to her parents’ mansion, Catherine hadn’t spoken a single word. Not once. Not to her mother on the drive over, and not to her father when he finally arrived home. She didn’t think she had much to say, and so, she avoided talking to them, or explaining why she had lied about going out of country with Cross when they demanded answers. She stuck to her room, locked the door behind her, and wouldn’t come out when asked.
Like a child.
She was not a child anymore. And she needed to stop using child-like tactics to avoid things she didn’t want to deal with.
Catherine moved to the doorway to make her presence known. The gazes of her family turned on her standing there, but none of them seemed all too surprised that she was.
“You react to the things I hide, or the lies I tell,” Catherine said softly. “That’s what he told me today.”
“What, who?” Dante asked.
“Cross. And he’s right because you do. The problem is, you know I’m lying a lot of the time, but instead of calling me out on it you choose to wait. Like you’re waiting for me to trip on my own lies, and then we go from there.”
Her mother’s gaze darted between Catherine in the doorway, and Dante near the large window. Antony didn’t move from his position beside her father’s large desk, but he did take one of the high-back leather chairs to sit in.
“Perhaps I do,” Dante finally replied, “but I don’t always mean for it to happen that way. I want you to come to me, and tell me the truth. While I’m waiting for that to happen, sometimes you … trip, as you say.”
“We’re not going to do that anymore, Daddy.”
“And what does that mean, Catherine?”
A lot of things.
It meant a lot of things.
Catherine ignored the nerves clawing their way around her belly, and attempting to climb into her throat. If she allowed her anxiety to take control, she wouldn’t be able to talk at all. She really needed to talk right now. It was more important than ever.
She stroked her inner wrist, letting her thumb rove back and forth overtop the black cross tattoo. The familiar action soothed her anxiety, and the scar hidden beneath the ink reminded her of just how far she actually had come since that day.
“It’s not Cross’s fault,” Catherine said. “Not for leaving me back when I was eighteen, not for my depression, and not for a bunch of other things you don’t even know about. But also, he did not cause me to break apart my razor that night, and slit my wrist open.”
Dante opened his mouth to speak, but Catherine was already beating him to the punch.
“And neither did you, Daddy,” she added, still quiet but firm. “The only person who caused me to do that, was me. I made the choice to do that because I felt I had no other choice. Because I was so unhappy, and had been that way for a long time. I would just become happier, and it seemed like because I was doing well my mind had to step in and remind me just why I couldn’t stay that way for long.”
“Catherine.”
“I sabotaged myself—over and over. In ways you don’t even know. But he did; he knew every time. I’ve lied to you and to Ma … to everyone. Yet, I never lied to Cross until the very end. And do you know what he did when he caught me lying to him?”
“No,” Dante admitted.
“Yes, you do. You just didn’t know why, Daddy.” Catherine glanced down at her wrist, and stroked her thumb over the tattoo one last time. “He made me leave that last time. He knew then that nothing he could do was going to help me. He couldn’t keep being the one thing that made me happy because eventually I was going to start sabotaging us, too. I already started to, really, and he saw it before I did.”
Catherine blew out a shaky breath, saying, “So he gave us a chance to get it right later. He broke my heart to make me get better because I never would have been able to do it on my own. Not when it was easier for me to expect him to do it like he always had. All the times he lied for me, hid things for me, covered for me … all of it, he stopped.”
“Like what things?” Dante asked. “Tell me what things, Catherine.”
Now or never …
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that you knew I was dealing for John and Andino?”
Dante stiffened in place.
“I mean, I know we sort of talked about—”
“You came here and yelled at us, but did not let us speak,” her mother corrected.
“True enough, but my question remains the same.”
Catrina coughed from her spot on the couch.
“Well?” Catherine asked when everyone stayed quiet.
“Because I didn’t want to influence you,” Dante admitted. “I didn’t want you to feel like the path your mother and I walked was one we expected you to walk, too. I wanted you to make that choice on your own, without input from someone like me.”
“Were you happy that I was doing it?”
“I am happy you found something you were good at—something you enjoyed. I would have been just as pleased had you found the same talent cooking pizza in a restaurant, Catty.”
“Why do I feel like you’re leaving something out?”
“Because I was not happy that you continued to try and hide what you were doing, and that it’s taken you all this time to finally tell me you were doing it.”
“So why didn’t you speak up, Daddy?”
“I told you—”
“Yeah, because you didn’t want to influence me. I was sixteen when I started; I’m twenty-five, now. That’s a long time. Don’t you think had I not liked it I would have stopped? Don’t you think your influence would have been pointless by now to my choices?”
“I think that had I brought it up no matter the time you may have felt as though I disapproved. I didn’t want how I felt about any part of it to sway how you chose to conduct your business. I do the same thing for your mother.”
“Except you know what Ma does … or did,” Catherine said, shrugging.
“Does,” Catrina corrected, “only from afar, now.”
Catherine wasn’t interested in semantics with her parents. “You allowed me to keep hiding it, and so I did, without knowing that you actually knew. That’s what Grandpapa means when he says you and I have made this mess we’re in. He’s right. And Cross, too. He was right when he said you react to the things I lie or hide from you. I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“So don’t,” her father said.
“As long as you don’t go for the easy target, Daddy. See, Cross is the easy target for you. When things happen, you blame him. When I can’t handle my own shit, you blame him. When I am unhappy, when I make bad choices, or anything that you disagree with, as long as he is within shouting distance of me, you blame him. It’s not him. It’s me.”
“I know I’m not the easy target,” Catherine said, sighing, “but it’s not him. It’s me. I also know you’ve done that—blamed him for things—because I have not allowed you to do differently. I’ve hidden things and lied because I was terrified of disappointing you in some way, and by default, all you saw was him in the way. All you thought was that he was the one being a catalyst to my behavior and bad choices.”
Dante’s gaze dropped from her. “Not always, Catherine.”
“Yes, always.”
“Catty.”
She stroked her tattoo once more.
The nerves climbed higher.
She chose to speak through it.
“When I was fourteen and snuck out to the beach that summer when John was supposed to be looking after me, I did that. Cross had no idea you didn’t approve; I never told him different. I broke up with him after that because I thought it would make you happy. It only made me worse.”
Catherine chewed on her inner cheek before adding, “That time with the Lexus, at school …”
Dante cleared his throat, looking more uncomfortable by the second. “Sex in the car, yeah. I remember.”
“I let you think that was his fault. You assumed it had been his idea, that it was something I followed along with, and I never bothered to tell you different. I didn’t want you to look at me differently. You already hated him for it—I didn’t want you to hate me, too.”
“Catherine—”
“I was raped at a party by an older boy when I was sixteen, and Cross beat the shit out of him at school when I went to him for help.”
“What?”
Pain saturated her father’s tone.
Catherine kept talking.
“The school thought it was a fight between the boys over me; I begged Cross not to tell the truth, so he let them think what they wanted. They told you what they thought happened, I never let you think anything different because I didn’t want you to know the truth. I was scared someone might look at me and think it was my fault; I allowed myself to be raped. All you saw was Cross making a scene, and I happened to be at the center of it.”
Catherine looked down at her hands. “Out of everything, I regret that one the most. Had I spoke up then, had I asked for help, the rest might not have happened. That one thing took a happy me, and turned her into someone I didn’t know—someone I didn’t like. I couldn’t even look at my reflection because I felt wrong inside. The only thing that ever felt good and right after that was Cross.”
Catrina seemed as though she was going to get up off the couch, but Catherine held her hand up to stop her mother.
“Please, don’t,” she said gently.
“Reginella,” Catrina murmured.
“I’m fine. Really. The best thing you and Daddy ever did for me was force Cara’s presence in this house, and had me talk to her. She helped me more than I can explain; she made me look in the mirror, and take responsibility for myself. I have tried to do that ever since, but there’s still things I’ve not done that for. I’m trying to do that now, so that I can get it right this time. Please let me do that. Let me stand on my own; let me hold myself together. I can handle it, Ma. I have handled it.”
“Okay.”
Dante still hadn’t moved.
Neither had her grandfather.
“Who was the boy?” Dante asked, eerily calm.
“He doesn’t matter.”
“Oh, he does, sweetheart.”
“He doesn’t because he’s dead.” Catherine flicked a hand as if to wave her statement off when she added, “And I suppose you can thank Cross for that, too.”
“That year of high school … when you partied and stayed away for days, fucked off all the time … on and off again with Cross,” her father said.
Catherine nodded once. “I wanted to feel better, but I couldn’t seem to fix how I felt inside. Cross helped, but only enough to keep me relatively safe. He gave me someone to go to. A safe place to fall. I would fuck up, call him, and he would fix it. Or hide things for me. He always made sure I got home safe and sober, though, but all you saw was him and me—fighting, or being out, unhappy. You didn’t know, so it isn’t your fault, really.”
“What else?”
This wasn’t easy.
She supposed it wasn’t meant to be.
“That time Cross was in the hospital after I graduated?”
“Something happened at a party,” Dante said.
Catherine shook her head. “I was dealing at some street races, and someone who felt I ripped them off tried to assault me. Cross saved the day again—I lied to cover my own ass afterwards. It was already too late then, though, because I was falling back into the same old spiral.”
“I wasn’t sixteen this time around,” Catherine said, feeling a lump starting to form in her throat. “I didn’t do the same kind of thing I did when I was sixteen. Instead, I went to the doctor, got pills to make me feel better, and abused them because numbness was easier. I was buying off a girl at school who had a connection, too, so I was also using someone else’s meds. I drank a bottle of wine a day to wash them back. I couldn’t get up in the morning without my hands shaking. Cross didn’t know until I told him.”
Antony leaned back in his chair, and rubbed at his temples. “This is a lot to take in, Catherine.”
“I know.”
“What happened after that?” Dante asked, ignoring the exchange entirely.
“He, uh, got me clean, covered my ass and lied to everyone about what was going on, and put me back up on my feet one last time. He wanted me to back off dealing with Andino because he thought it was going to be a catalyst to another round of my depression, but I didn’t want to stop. I went behind his back—I lied to him like I lied to everybody else.”
“And so he made you leave,” Dante assumed.
“Yeah, he did, and it was the best thing he could have ever done for me. The thing is, Daddy … you both love me, and you both want to make me happy, and keep me safe. In different ways, sure, but the end goal is the same. Don’t you realize that? You and Cross, you’re working toward the same thing, but you both think you can do it better. Now it’s not me sabotaging it, anymore, so please don’t be the one to interfere this time, either.”
“I do want you to be happy,” Dante said.
“And I am,” Catherine insisted. “Happier than I was years ago. In a different way than I was when I was thirteen, and fell in love with him the first time. I have got this figured out, Daddy. I am okay, and I want to keep being okay. I need to be where I am happy, and so I am going to go there. He has always made me happy, as long as I was happy with myself. For a long time, I didn’t even realize I was unhappy with me.”
“I see.”
“He always saved me. I always lied. I didn’t mind learning how to save myself this time around, and I need you to let me figure out the other half, too. No more lying. No more pretending. I’m going to be happy, and that means doing whatever it takes to get there, and stay that way. I have not been very good to Cross, not like he has been for me, but he still wants me. He has always wanted me. I’d like to be what he deserves this time around. I want to make him happy; I want to be happy.”
Dante nodded, and closed the distance between them so that he could stand in front of her. “Cross makes you happy.”
“Very happy.”
“I’m worried there will be no one to catch you if you fall, Catherine. I might not be able to catch you.”
“I learned how to catch myself because he didn’t give me a choice. Let me do that now.”
“All right, so I will step back and let you do that,” Dante murmured.
Catherine stood stone-still as her father pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. Her mother got up from the leather couch, crossed the small space between them, and wiped one tear that had escaped from Catherine’s eye with a soft smile.
“No matter what, we’re proud of you,” Catrina said. “We love you.”
Catherine took her mother’s kiss. “Yeah, I know that now, Ma.”
“We should have said it louder.”
“And more often,” Dante agreed.
“You did,” Catherine assured, “but I still had to figure it out on my own time.”
“Well done. I think some time to digest all of this is needed, though.” Antony pushed his form up from the chair, and clapped his son on the shoulder. “Now, someone needs to take me home. Cecelia doesn’t like being in that mansion all alone at night.”
Dante chuckled. “Yes, Papa.”
“I’ll take him,” Catherine offered, shrugging. “I’m going that way, anyway. It’s not that far out of the way.”
“To Manhattan?” Dante asked.
“To Cross.”
“I figured.”
Catherine had simply been biding her time.
Seven years was a long time to wait.
She was ready to go home.