He rested his head on my chest right over my heart while patting my back comfortingly, and then I couldn’t let him go. This was my mother’s only family, the one she’d had no choice but to leave behind. In some strange way, he was the connection between our old worlds, hers and mine. Between her past and my beginning.
“I’ve got you, grandpa.” I didn’t rush him when he broke down in tears, just stood there with our arms wrapped around each other for what felt like hours while he sobbed, and I tried hard not to give in to the emotion that was now riding me hard.
“Where is she? Where’s my Sofia? Is she well? How has she been?” He rattled off one question after the other, and I patiently answered as the others held back, watching from a distance.
“A son, a big strapping grandson. Your grandmother, rest her soul, would’ve loved to meet you. But she sees yes!” He pointed a finger up to the sky with a sad smile on his face.
He could have no idea what his words did to me. Because I never let myself feel for too long, never dwell on my feelings, I’d brushed away my thoughts on how this first meeting would go. But now I admit that I half expected him to reject me because of where I’d come from, or rather how I’d come to be.
Instead, it seems after those first few seconds of misunderstanding when he thought I was Ricci, once he learned who I was, he felt genuine joy. My mind was already moving ten steps ahead. Who am I kidding? I knew how this was going to end years ago when I first started trying to find his whereabouts.
“Come in, come in.” He gestured towards the side of the palazzo where there were other dwellings.
“No, grandpa, you’re coming with me.”
“Where?” He actually seemed surprised.
“To Paris, to France, where my mother is, and then home.” He looked stupefied for a second, then turned to look around at the place he’d called home for the past two decades almost.
I don’t care if he’s the caretaker or whatever else he had going on; he wasn’t staying. Not even long enough for someone else to come take his place. “I’ll; I’ll have to get my things.”
“Do you need to call someone, let them know you’re leaving?” No one else had shown up thus far, so I’m guessing he was the only one here.
“No-no, I’m the only one here. The caretaker and his wife come every morning, but we stay out of each other’s way. I will just leave them a note. Eh, how did you find me?” I told him about the nun as we walked back to the little cottage where he stayed. He told me all about how she’d saved him that night, his words matching hers almost perfectly.
He seemed to think he owed her a debt, me I’m not so sure. Granted, she was young back then, but after all these years to have said nothing, callous. Inside the old cottage that had seen better days, he dragged an old suitcase from beneath the bed, then looked around the room as if lost.
I’m sure he was as flustered as I was, with my sudden appearance, plus the fact that I wasn’t giving him a chance to think before uprooting his life. “You don’t have to bring anything with you, just anything you value.”
“I don’t have much of that. I left the village in a hurry, as you know, and never went back, so there was no time to take anything with me when I came here.”
His face filled with sorrow adding another wound to Ricci’s already lead riddled body. I’m going to kill that fuck torturously slow. But first, I’m going to make him pay. Him and his little band of deviants. Now was not the time; everything in order. His time, though, will come.
I knew I was rushing him, but I wanted out of there as soon as possible. I won’t breathe easy until he’s on that plane with me, and since he didn’t have anything but a few changes of clothes and an old hat, we weren’t there long after he wrote his note. It was a whirlwind and, all things considered, went better than I expected.
I told him about my mother’s life after he sent her to safety, while he, in a mix of broken English and Sicilian, asked me everything you’d expect. Now, instead of horror, he looked at me with a smile. It was only when he wound down from all the excitement that the rest of what I’d learned hit me like a Mack truck to the chest.
Now that he was safe, my mind went to the gory details the nun had shared. The night she described was much worse than anything I could’ve imagined, and I’d imagined some awful shit over the years. The others seemed to pick up on my mood and kept grandpa entertained with what little English he understood while I mused.