When I jump out, I find my sensible shoes aren’t that sensible next to a riverbed. The hem of my skirt drags in the mud as I make my way to where the men have gathered in the beams of the headlights, under a cloud of cigarette smoke—thirty feet from the pile of tires that must be Angel’s Tower. They talk fast, insult each other, and glance at me with suspicious eyes. Then they dig.
It’s slow work. Shovelful by shovelful, they muddy shirts their wives will launder without question. Massimo limps around the pit, barking orders, champing to get down there but for the bullet wound in his leg. I watch from a safe distance, arms crossed, praying and praying.
If Dario lied and there’s nothing here, his value to the Colonia’s going to drop. They could kill him anyway. If our mother is here, my brother might end my husband’s life out of vengeance.
So I pray for a third thing. It’s not a yes or a no. A maybe, possibly, could be. Something that opens up new, unconsidered promises.
The hole is as wide as a man is tall and as deep to their knees when another car appears, adding to the halo of light. I shield my eyes as the driver gets out, then the passenger, who I recognize first by his swagger. Sergio Agosti.
“Hey, Massi.” Marco, the driver, I recognize by voice. “We’re gonna give a hand.”
He goes to the back of the car while Sergio approaches me.
“Taking a break, honeypants?”
“We have this, Sergio.” Massimo leans so hard on his cane it drives into the dirt. “It’s not your problem.”
“Like fuck it ain’t.”
“How’s that?” Massimo’s only a few inches taller than Sergio but seems to tower over him.
“I’ve done what you shoulda been doing all this time.” He backs up toward his car. “I got someone to verify what you find.” He turns and walks to the rear.
“Stay here,” Massimo says to me, then follows Sergio.
“Sure.”
Ever the liar, I’m right behind him.
Sergio opens the trunk.
“Jesus fucking Christ…” Massimo mutters.
I creep forward.
“Been lurking around right under your nose,” Sergio replies.
In the space between their bodies, I see inside the trunk.
A woman. Hands zip-tied. Mouth covered in silver duct tape. Eyes half-open as if she’s just coming back into consciousness.
Oria. Her left cheek’s blackened and her hair has a fist-sized nest on the top.
Her eyes open all the way.
No. She can’t see me and think I’ve betrayed her or Dario. She’s not careful when she’s upset. She’s a loose cannon.
“Holy shit!” A voice comes from the dig. “Massi!”
Sergio slams the trunk closed. They run to the hole, and I follow like a woman on a string, nearly tripping on my mud-wet skirt.
We circle the ditch, which caves to a point like the inside of a cone. At the center, a swatch of dirty cloth comes up like a weed. Ray scrapes around it. It’s too dark to see the color, but the hand-stitched lace inset is unmistakably Colonia.
Despite his leg injury, Massimo jumps in the hole and digs around the cloth, while the question I’ve been afraid to ask runs over and over in my head.
Are you my mother?
Is she buried? Or enslaved somewhere far away, stripped of everything, living without living? I can’t bear either option.
Massimo finds hair. Pale brown like my mother’s.
Ray finds a shoe on the breaking bones of a foot.
“Fuck you,” my brother curses with effort, getting on his hands and knees to dig with his hands. “Fuck you forever, you animal.”
“No.” My denial is a whisper.
This is all meaningless. It could be anyone. I can’t say it, because I don’t want it proven.
Are you my mother?
I have to say it, because I need to know the nature of my love.
“Check the back collar,” I say. Massimo looks up at me. “For the cherries.”
He takes too long to figure out what I’m saying. I jump into the hole, then recoil from what I intended to do. It stinks down here. My stomach lurches from the smell and the thought of touching a decaying body.
“Get out,” Massimo growls.
I have to do it. Dario would. To save me, he’d swim a river of shit. Now I have to save him and prove this isn’t my mother.
“No.” I get on my knees in the mud and touch the back of the collar. The head drops off. I sob in fear and disgust, then turn out the back neck.
A tab pops out. Covered in brown death and disintegrating in my fingers, I can still see what once was three bright red cherries.
This is my mother, rotting.
“No!” I drop the dress. I wish she was some sick man’s slave, and I’m glad she’s dead, and I wish I could find her, and I don’t.
Dario lied when he said she was alive, then he made me fall in love with him without telling me what he didn’t know. He didn’t care about anything but controlling me.
He painted a picture for me. Dario Lucari—savior of oppressed women. Sainted survivor. Monster with a heart of gold.
Liar.
My breath hitches in a sob, and the dam that held back my sorrow bursts. Are you my mother Are you my mother are you my motherareyoumymothermothermother?
“That’s it.” Sergio claps his hands together once. “This is done. Lucari can’t live. When he’s dead, I marry the princess over here.”
Massimo tries to get out of the hole but barks in pain and drops back.
I don’t even care. I’m a little girl clutching the steam shovel hankie until it’s soaked in sweat—shattered all over again. This time, Grandma’s not here to stop me from crying, and I lose myself in sobbing, unable to stand, falling to my knees in the sewage-soaked mud. None of the men comfort me. They don’t know what to do with a woman’s grief.
My brother lets two guys help him out of the hole, then tells Sergio, “I say who lives and who dies.”
“Let Lucari live and see how far that gets you with these people.”
There’s a pause before the answer. I pick up my head. Through the layer of tears, I see the men leaning on their shovels with their jaws set. They want Dario dead. I’ll have nothing. Not even the man who killed her.
“We can’t!” Massimo shouts. “If we kill him, we lose access to the rest of those women. And you need my consent to marry her. You’re not getting it.”
“No, buddy, you’re not getting it,” Sergio says with a hint of compassion. “They’re all dead. All of them. Okay? Your father already gave her to me. I don’t need shit to call in the first promise.”
Massimo looks defiant but says nothing. Sergio’s right. He knows our rules. I’ve been sold to him already. The only thing keeping him from taking me is that I have a living husband.
That can be resolved.
If Sergio’s willing to take me broken, he can take me when I become a widow.
Still, I don’t fall into blind sobbing for myself or the freedom I’ll never have.
My tears are for my mother and the man who let her rot in a hole while saying he loved me.
Massimo stalks to the car, head down like a man with the weight of a crown on it.
CHAPTER 16