“Mi bambini,” Nonna cries, bustling in from the kitchen to fuss over my brothers. They take turns picking her up and spinning her around while she fawns over their muscles and how big they’ve gotten.
When they set her down, she takes my hands in hers and looks me over, her eyes crinkling at the corners with more wrinkles than the last time I saw her. Her hair is still raven-black and wound into a thick bun at the back of her head, but at sixty, she’s anything but feeble. Our grandmother a force to be reckoned with, all four feet and ten inches of her. Five minutes with her, and it’s easy to see where the Dolces get our steel spines.
“More beautiful every day,” she says, patting my cheek. “We have so much catching up to do. I can’t wait to hear all about your new school, your friends, your classes. Do you have a special boy in your life?”
Her eyes sparkle, but I shake my head. “Any word?” I ask, gripping her hand and anxiously searching her eyes.
Her lips tighten, and she shakes her head. “No,bambina.I’m sorry.”
I nod, having figured as much. “Where’s Mom?”
“Oh, you know your mother,” she says with a scowl of disapproval. “Spends more time in bed than a bride on her honeymoon, and there’s not a man in sight.”
“Yeah,” I say, biting my lip. I had hoped that maybe things would be different for her here, too. Maybe she’d get herself together, for Royal if nothing else.
“Oh, I shouldn’t complain about your mother,” Nonna says with a dismissive wave. “She’s making it easier on all of us by taking her rest when she wants it. I know you’ve got enough on your mind without having to worry about us fighting.”
“You’re here to help?” I ask, watching my brothers disappear into the kitchen with Grandpa Dolce.
“Of course,” Nonna says. “We’ll find him,bambina mia. You know that, don’t you?”
I nod, my throat aching as I swallow.
“You don’t believe me,” she says, patting my cheek hard enough to sting a little. “Don’t you dare give up on your brother, girl. We’re going to find him. You can trust me on that.”
“Oh,Nonna,” I say, wrapping my arms around her and hugging her hard. I don’t know what else to say, so we just stand there for a minute.
Then she pulls back and smiles. “Such a big house! Show me your room, ‘tina mia.”
In my room, Nonna strolls around, running her fingers along the walls with a faraway look in her eyes. “I always wondered what lay hidden behind these walls,” she says, pulling aside the curtains to gaze out the window.
My heart does a funny little flip in my chest. “What?”
Surely mynonnaisn’t going senile. She may be small, but she’s strong as an ox and twice as stubborn. She always jokes around about aging, flexing her muscles and saying “I’d like to see old age try to get me.”
She turns away from the window and sighs. “I guess your father finally got his dream. To live in the big house where he was shunned so long ago. I think he was born with a vengeful bone. Couldn’t talk him out of it no matter how hard I tried. I can’t say it’s ever hurt him, so maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, my head spinning and my heart hammering. It’s one thing for her to say something bad about Mom, but Daddy is her own son.
“Don’t tell me your father didn’t tell you about the time he was thrown out of this very house,” she says. “Buying it outright must have been one of his proudest moments.”
“No,” I say slowly. “He mentioned he lived around here for a while when he was in high school. That’s it, though. Why? What happened?”
“Oh, look at that, you have a chair outside,” Nonna says, looking out onto the balcony.
“Yeah, I sit out there sometimes,” I say. “Or… I used to, anyway.”
“Well, after that long flight, I could really use a cigarette break,” she says, winking at me. “Don’t tell your grandfather. I told him I quit.”
I can’t help but smile back at her. Without another word, she opens my window and ducks out onto the veranda. I grab the little white wooden chair that sits at my vanity and climb out the window to join her as she plops into my deck chair and pulls a pack of Virginia Slims from the pocket of her light jacket.
She lights up and sighs, leaning back and closing her eyes as she lets out a slow trail of smoke. “Ah, there’s nothing like that first drag.”
“Nonna,” I prod. “How come you never told me you lived here?”
“Nothere,” she says, gesturing vaguely to our surroundings with her cigarette. “We weren’t made of such rich stuff. You know your grandpa and me don’t need all this.”
“But you lived in Faulkner.”