“You’ve moved the mountain,” Bianca said, as the door closed behind them.
“You have, indeed. You’ve given us back the Luca we used to know.”
Cheyenne smiled as she transferred chocolate chip cookies from a big platter to a wicker basket.
“He’s a wonderful man.”
“He is. He always was.” Alessandra licked a drop of chocolate from her finger. “But to see him so happy…”
“We all took the news about our father hard. You know about that, si?”
“Yes. Luca told me.”
“Well,” Bianca said, “we all suspected our father had a dark secret. Even as children, we knew something was not right. And when we learned the truth…”
“We were all hurt and angry,” Alessandra said, “but Luca was filled with rage.” She smiled. “Now, that rage is gone. He is different. What I mean is, it is a long time since we saw our brother so—so—”
“Relaxed,” Bianca said.
Alessandra nodded. “And so trusting.”
Cheyenne felt her smile tilt.
“Really? The Luca I know has always been trusting.”
“Well, that’s the point. The Luca you know is the Luca who loves you. You have changed him.”
“He’s changed me,” Cheyenne said, a little too quickly. “I mean—I mean I had some trust issues myself. Everyone does.”
“Not like our Luca,” Alessandra said softly. “I think he may have been the one our father hurt the most. Bianca and I grew weary of his endless promises to spend holidays with us early on. So did Matteo. But Luca…there is a part of Luca that tried very, very hard to believe that though our father was not perfect he was, at heart, a good man.”
“We can remember being very young,” Bianca said, “five and six, perhaps, and already suspecting that there was no point in thinking that our father would come home for Christmas, as he always promised, or for our birthdays. Matteo and Luca were older. Ten. Maybe eleven. And Matteo knew, as we did, that our father was given to making promises he wouldn’t keep. Luca would say he knew it, too, but—”
“But,” said Alessandra, “he was the one who sat up until midnight Christmas Eve, waiting for the sound of our father’s car, the one who would not open his birthday presents because he was sure our father was going to come through the door at any minute. Luca clung to the hope that our father would not disappoint him longer than the rest of us did.”
Bianca nodded. “And he paid the price. You know, growing up with a father we couldn’t trust and with parents whose marriage must have been an endless series of deceits affected us all. As most children do, we learned to sublimate our feelings.”
Alessandra groaned. “Dio, must you speak psychobabble?”
“It isn’t psychobabble, it’s the truth.” Bianca looked at Cheyenne. “Alessandra and I learned how important it is for women to be strong and independent. Marco convinced himself he would never marry. Well, the lesson my sister and I learned is actually a good one. As for Matteo—Matteo may yet meet a woman who will change his mind.”
“And the moon may turn out to be made of green cheese,” Alessandra muttered.
Bianca made a face. “The point is,” she said, reaching for Cheyenne’s hand, “it was Luca who concerned us the most. We feared he would have a sad life, that he would never learn to trust anyone, to believe in someone enough to permit himself to love her.”
“And then you came along,” Alessandra said softly, “and now our brother is whole.”
* * *
Cheyenne couldn’t go back outside to that happy, laughing bunch of people and pretend to be part of them.
Not yet.
“You two go on,” she told Luca’s sisters. “I’m going to make myself a cup of tea.”
She didn’t drink tea unless she was sick, but nobody knew that.
“We’ll stay with you,” Bianca said, but Cheyenne said, no, they couldn’t do that.
“Everyone’s waiting for those cookies. If they don’t get them soon, they’re liable to storm the kitchen.”
They laughed. Bianca hugged her; Alessandra kissed her cheek. Finally, the door shut after them.
And Cheyenne let the phony smile drop from her face.
Now what?
Get herself under control, that was what. Grab that much-vaunted control that had carried her through life, and hang onto it.
Pin a smile on her face. Go back to the fire-pit. Laugh and joke, and sit with Luca’s arm around her.
Luca, who loved her and trusted her.
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
She wrapped her arms around herself, paced out of the kitchen, through the big dining room, then down the hall.
He trusted her.
And she had repaid that trust by lying to him, by withholding the truth that would surely have driven him away, because she was not a woman that a good, decent, kind man like Luca Bellini would want in his life.
What man would ever want a woman like her?
The story she’d told him about what the day Baby died… It had only been part of the truth. Yes, Mama had beaten her black and blue, and she had finally hit her back, and the next day, the school had called the authorities.
But there was more, much more to it than that.
The day Baby died was the day she had finally refused to let Mama ‘give’ her to a man.
The nightmare had started months earlier, with touching. Mama had boyfriends who’d liked having fun. That was what Mama called it. Having fun.
“They just want to have a little fun, sweetie,” she’d say. “Come on. Let Tommy touch those little titties. He won’t hurt you.”
Tommy. Or Jerry. Or Billy. What did it matter?
And when she’d sobbed and begged and said No, no, please Mama, I don’t like this, Mama would turn cold and mean.
Children were supposed to obey their mamas, she’d say, and to help with chores. ‘Having fun’ was Cheyenne’s chore, and it was time she got used to it.
On her thirteenth birthday, ‘having fun’ escalated into something even worse.
Far worse.
“Happy birthday, sweetie,” Mama said, her eyes big, black holes from whatever she’d been shooting or snorting. “Today you’re gonna be a big girl. A real big girl.”
Mama had led her into the back room of their trailer. A fat man who stank of whiskey and sweat had been waiting, sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed with his pants around his ankles.
“Be nice,” Mama had said to her.
She’d shut the door, the man had grinned…
Bile rose in Cheyenne’s throat. To this day, she couldn’t think of what had happened without being sick.
That had been the first time, but not the last.
It had happened three times after that, and when she’d refused to do it, Mama had grabbed her and shoved her into that back room. Cheyenne had thought about ending the horror like a girl she’d read about in the paper, cutting her wrists, just letting go of everything…
And then, she’d discovered Baby. Sweet, sad, neglected, abused Baby.
Loving him had saved her.
Losing him had given her the courage to take hold of her life, because what she’d told Luca about that day wasn’t exactly true.
Mama had beaten her, all right, but not because Cheyenne had reported the horse’s brutal death to the police.
She’d beaten her because when they got back to their trailer, Mama had folded her arms over her skinny bosom and said there was only one way Cheyenne could make up for the trouble she’d caused.
There was a man waiting for her in the bedroom.
Cheyenne had thought of her beloved Baby and how he had died because she hadn’t been strong enough to save him.
And she’d thought, I will never be weak again.
“You hear me, girl?” Mama had said. “Move your skinny ass, right now!
Cheyenne had taken a deep, deep breath. Breathed it out. And said that she would never do what Mama want
ed her to do again.
Mama had grabbed her by the arm. “You go on back there and make that man happy or so help me Christ, I’ll beat you black and blue.”
Cheyenne had spat in her mother’s face, just as she had done to the hoodlum the night Luca had found her walking home. Luca had saved her then, but there’d been nobody to save her from Mama that day so long ago, and Mama had done just what she’d threatened. She’d beaten her harder than ever before. A man had come barreling out of the bedroom and thundered past them, and Cheyenne had taken the blows and taken them, and then she’d screamed with pain and rage, balled up her fist and punched her mother in the face.
That night, she’d slept on a bench hidden in a tangle of bushes in the trailer park. The next morning, she went to school and straight to the principal’s office, walked right into that office without knocking and when the woman looked at her and said “Ohmygod, what happened to you, child?” Cheyenne told her.
All of it.
Everything, starting with ‘having fun’ and ending with what had gone down the previous day.
The principal had called Child Services. Cheyenne had gone into foster care, and foster care had been what had saved her.
She knew there were endless stories about how awful foster care was and, no, it hadn’t been wonderful, but she’d been lucky. She’d been sent to a small group home for girls, she’d been helped by good people, she’d gone to New York and made something of her life, she’d put the rest behind her…
Tell all that to Luca?
No.
Never.
He would stop loving her even though he might pretend that he still did, at least for a little while, because he was a good man. He was the best man in the world, and she was—she was—
The back door slammed.
“Cheyenne?”
She froze. It was Luca.
“Bellissima, where are you? My sisters said you were making tea.”
Her heart began to pound. She couldn’t let him see her like this. The truth was, she couldn’t let him see her at all. She had to get away, get back to New York, write him a letter, tell him that—that she’d changed her mind, that she was too busy to think of love.
“Cheyenne!” There was an urgent ring to his voice now; she could hear his footsteps in the kitchen.