And now, it seems as though he’s standing right behind me.
I don’t turn around.
I hear him—the scuff of old, worn boot soles against the stone floor. The huff that comes out of him as he sinks down onto the pew behind mine. I smell him, too. Cold winter air, and snow, engine grease and clove cigarettes.
“You’re bigger than I thought you’d be.” He says it casually, like he’s commenting on unexpectedly good weather to a stranger. “You were a scrawny mite when you were little. Way shorter than the other kids at school.”
Alex…
Do not…
…turn around…
Giacomo—Jack—is quiet for a moment, as if he has every right to waltz in here and destroy my peace, and he isn’t planning on losing any sleep over it. Meanwhile, my synapses are firing so rapidly and randomly that I can’t formulate a single thought beyond ‘KILL HIM.’
A tapping sound breaks the silence—the toe of his boot, knocking against the underside of my pew, directly beneath me. “I came because…well, you know why I came. I came because of Benny.”
My first words to my father in over ten years are this: “I’m surprised you even remembered his name.”
The stranger behind me sucks on his teeth disapprovingly. “C’mon now, A. That’s not very fair. Of course I remember his name. He was my son.”
“No.”
Somewhere outside, a car horn keens.
Ten seconds later, a young woman enters through a door at the head of the church and dips to her knees before the life-sized depiction of Christ on the cross. She prays, quickly crosses herself, and then hurries down the aisle toward the exit. The sound of the heavy door closing after her echoes for what feels like an eternity.
Giacomo’s had plenty of time to stew on his response. “I’m sorry? What do you mean, no?”
“You weren’t his father. You were the guy…who lived with our mother for a couple of years…knocked her up twice…cost her the national debt of a small country in lost fucking bail money...sold our television…then fucking disappeared off the face of the planet.” I don’t mean to keep taking breaks before each statement. I just can’t speak properly. I never thought an emotion would be able to eclipse the grief I’ve been experiencing the past few days, but I was wrong. The fury hurtling along my nerve endings and forging fires within my bones is like white lightning.
Giacomo laughs under his breath. “Alessandro. You have no idea what you’re talking about. I didn’t just up and disappear. No, she made me leave. You were too young to remember the fights. The screaming. I wasn’t perfect, son, but your mother was fucking cra—”
I could give two shits about being in a house of God. I twist, spinning around, hurling myself at the back of the pew, practically throwing myself over it. Suddenly, I have a handful of t-shirt material in my left fist, and my right is raised high above my head, ready to come crashing down into the miserable fucker’s face, which is…
…so much like my own.
He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even react to the fact that I’ve grabbed hold of him and I’m about to knock his front fucking teeth out. His eyes, dark as midnight in the gloom of the church, pierce through me in an unsettling way that seems all too familiar. There are lines on his face, bracketing his mouth, across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes, but his hair is still jet-black, not a grey hair in sight. He looks fit, too. Like he’s kept himself in shape. He always was a vain bastard.
“If you’re gonna hit me, get on and do it, A. We’ve got a lot to talk about, an’ I don’t see any point in wasting time posturing.”
“Posturing?” Laughter bubbles up the back of my throat. That’s what he thinks this is? Some sort of pissing contest between a hormonal teenager and his hard-done-by old man? He was about to call my mother crazy but he’s the one with the fucking screw loose. I let him go, shoving him roughly as I get to my feet. “You shouldn’t have come back here. You’re not wanted. You’re not fucking welcome.”
I walk away before I can do something stupid. I’ve dreamed of this moment so many times over the years—how I was going to take great pleasure in beating the ever-loving shit out of him for everything he did to us—but now that the opportunity has presented itself, I see it for the bad idea that it is. If I give myself permission to hit the sack of shit today, in this state of mind, I’m not going to be able to stop myself. I’ll fucking kill him, and where will that leave me? Rotting in a jail cell for the rest of my life, unable to hold Silver in my arms again? Yeah, fuck that. He isn’t fucking worth it.
I’m halfway to the church exit when it dawns on me that he’s following me. “Don’t you wanna know how I knew you were here?” he asks.
“No.”
“The bike out front. The Scout. It’s just like the old Indian I used to have. First motorcycle you ever rode on, Alessandro. Who else would have a bike like that around here? And who’d be dumb enough to actually ride it in this kind of weather?”
“What, you think it’s some kind of homage? Some kind of sign?” I slam through the doors, out into the sheet rain that’s started to fall while I was inside. “I barely remember you being at the house. Why the fuck would I remember what kind of bike you had?”
“You’re full of shit, kid. You remember just fine.” He grabs me by the shoulder, attempting to spin me round, but I knock his hand away. I’m genuinely surprised that he’d even try and touch me.
“Don’t. Don’t do that. Don’t call me kid. Son. A. None of it.”
He rubs at his bottom lip, grinning broad as you like. He’s soaked from head to toe already, the shoulders of his leather jacket turned dark with the rain, the front of his t-shirt plastered to his chest. “What you want me to call you, then? Fucking Sparkles?”
Hah. So funny. He’s actually fucking enjoying this. I lunge forward, getting up in his shit. I tower over him, four inches taller than he is. I’m bigger than him, too. Much, much bigger. He’s forty-five years old, and he hasn’t been in a fight in a very long time. At least not a proper fight, with someone who truly hates his stinking guts. I could tear him limb from limb and I am this fucking close to doing it.
Giacomo shakes his head, feigning disappointment. Can’t tell what he’s disappointed about, and I don’t really care. All I know is that I need to get away from the piece of shit before I lose all sense of reason and logic. “In case you forgot, they’re burying Ben today,” I grit out between my teeth. “Over at Greenwood. How about you do me and him both a favor and you stay the fuck away, yeah? There’s too little too late, old man. And then there’s this.”
He doesn’t follow after me again. He stands in the church parking lot, hands in his pockets, his eyes following me as I storm over to my bike, jam my helmet on my head, start the engine, and I tear away through the rain.
It isn’t until I’m halfway to the cemetery that I process the fact that my father’s leather jacket bore a Dreadnaughts M.C. patch on its sleeve.
6
SILVER