Vendetta(47)

I gaped. I had never seen someone so calm flip out so quickly.

Felice reached into his suit jacket, prompting Gino and Dom to pull back in their seats. Calvino shot to his feet and held his hands up, like he was surrendering. He spoke quietly and quickly.

Felice pulled his hand from his pocket and clenched it into a fist by his side. He ran his other hand through his hair, stopping to squeeze the back of his neck, pinching at it.

Slowly, and without taking his eyes off Felice, Calvino sat down.

Felice remained on his feet. He raised his chin so that he appeared even taller than usual, and with one final curse word directed solely at Calvino — but heard by everyone within a one-mile radius — he stormed out of the restaurant like a graceful, seething skeleton.

“What a strange man,” my mother whispered, her hushed words mingling with everyone else’s.

“Strange family,” I muttered, watching Gino and Dom resettle themselves at their table, falling back into conversation. Maybe in this one case I was actually lucky to have been ostracized. The Priestlys obviously had a lot going on, and I had already reached my drama quota for one lifetime. It was probably for the best. Even if it didn’t feel like it.

I shifted back to my mother and found her chewing up her bottom lip. “Sophie, there’s a lot you don’t know about your father and Uncle Jack,” she said, returning to our conversation like the dramatic interlude hadn’t happened at all. “Sometimes I can’t help but think Jack deserves to be in jail more than your father does.”

This was the first time I had ever heard my mother play the blame game about that night — or speak about it willingly, for that matter. It was one of those unsaid, defining moments that was always bubbling beneath the dynamic of our relationship but rarely openly acknowledged by either of us.

“But Jack wasn’t even there.”

“I know that,” she conceded. “But your uncle has always made friends with the wrong people, the sort of people who care more about money than family, and who encourage his paranoid delusions. When your father came to Cedar Hill, it was to make a new life with you and me — a better life than the one he had growing up. He was respectable and successful, but then Jack started coming around. He didn’t have a family of his own and so he looked at us like we were his, too. It had always been just him and your father growing up, those two boys against the world, and I think your father felt like he owed him a piece of our lives, too, so he wouldn’t be out on his own.

“But then Jack started putting these thoughts in your father’s head. The same thoughts I can see him trying to put in yours — ones designed to make you afraid and anxious. It got to the point where Jack would question everything and everyone who came into the diner, and soon he was making your father paranoid, too. The more I think about it, I can’t help but feel that if Jack hadn’t been getting under your father’s skin, then he wouldn’t have been so quick to believe that man was a dangerous intruder that night at the diner.”

“And he wouldn’t have shot him,” I finished coldly. “I don’t know if you can blame that on Jack.”

“He gave your father the gun.”

“He wanted him to protect himself,” I countered. “They’ve always looked out for each other.”

She scooped a tomato wedge onto her fork. “You’re right,” she replied quickly, shaking her head. “Never mind. I shouldn’t have brought it up on your birthday. This day should be about all the good things in your life.”

Suddenly the air between us was awkward and strained. I took a gulp of my Diet Coke and let my eyes wander back to the Priestlys, who had become uncharacteristically silent. Gino sat with his head in his hands, and Dom was leaning back, staring blankly at the ceiling. I knew how they felt.





I examined myself in my bedroom mirror, making sure my mother’s tinted moisturizer had blended into my skin. I applied some of her bronzer to the high points of my face and added some blush to my cheeks. I rifled through her makeup bag and fished out a deep kohl powder, sweeping it across my eyelids, before applying gooey black mascara to my lashes. Then I stood back and appraised my reflection, marveling at what the wonders of modern cosmetics could do for sun-starved skin.

My mother shuffled into the room and my gaze fell on the gift in her hands — a large rectangle covered in Disney princess wrapping paper. “Is that from Millie?”

My mother put the gift on the bed. “She dropped it off when you were in the shower. Open it. The suspense is killing me.”

I didn’t have to be asked twice. I ripped open the wrapping paper to find a gray shoe box. CARVELA was scrawled across it in neat black letters.