She nods. “I suppose we don’t talk about it much because it didn’t last long, and it wasn’t the happiest time in our lives for any of us. You know how proud your father can be. Just like his father.”
“What happened?”
“Well,” she says, taking a delicate drag on her skinny cigarette. “Your grandfather had made a few bad business deals, and he got himself into some debt. Long story short, he ended up owing money to the wrong people.”
“The mob?” I whisper.
“Well, certain people thought it would be best if we left town for a while until the dust settled, and this seemed like a good place to live a quiet life.”
Shit. No one has ever talked to me like this, like it’s something I have a right to know about my family. Like our connections aren’t unfit for my delicate ears.
“Are you saying… What I think you’re saying?” I ask.
“That our family is anything but quiet?” she asks, laughing as she taps her cigarette on the arm of her chair. “I suppose it was naïve to think we could blend in here, but we didn’t know anything about this town, or the south in general. It was… An adjustment for everyone.”
“What happened?” I ask, leaning forward in my chair. Nonna has always been open with me, but I’ve never stuck my nose where I was told it didn’t belong. But now… I don’t know. Things are different. I’m not as content to be sheltered and safe under my brothers’ wings as I used to be. Lately, I’ve wanted to peek my head out of the nest, see what’s hidden behind those broad, protective wings.
“Well, we moved here, that’s what happened,” she says. “You’ve been here a few months. You know how this town is. We’d heard all about southern hospitality, but it turned out, people weren’t as welcoming to outsiders as we’d hoped.”
I imagine my brothers starting at Willow Heights, with all their brag and bravado, but without money. It’s not a picture I want to dwell on. Before I can ask more, a door on the veranda opposite ours opens, and Devlin Darling steps out. He’s wearing a pair of low-slung grey sweatpants and a t-shirt with the Willow Heights crest on the front. His blond hair glints in the last rays of the cool, wintery sunlight as he stares across the way at us.
“Well, hell,” Nonna says, sitting up straighter in her chair. “Who is that?”
“That’s Devlin Darling,” I mutter, fighting the warmth that threatens to creep up my cheeks at the sight of him. I turn my face toward my grandma, refusing to be drawn in by the magnetic pull I can feel all the way across the expanse of lawn separating our houses.
Nonna examines him through narrowed eyes as she drags on her cigarette. “He’s quite a looker, isn’t he?” she asks at last, shooting me a sly grin.
I shrug. “He hates us.”
“I bet,” Nonna says, settling back in her chair. “Isn’t that what men do to women they can’t have?”
“What?” I ask.
“He’s a Darling,” she says. “Your father would never allow it.”
“So, what happened back then?” I ask. “Mom said Mr. Darling tried to steal his ideas or something. But that can’t be right if he was only in high school. Daddy didn’t even have the company until after I was born.”
I know, because he always tells me how he named the first candy after me, the company’s signature sparkling clear hard candies,Dolce Crystals.
“The Darlings ran this town back then,” she says, speaking to me while openly admiring the sexy neighbor boy on his deck. “Mr. Darling and all seven of his sons. I can’t remember how many were in school with your father, but there were quite a few. They even had some secret society in the school, I can’t recall the name of it, but I think even Mr. Darling senior was involved somehow. Your father would never admit it now, but he was dying to join. Of course they wouldn’t let him in, being a scholarship student and all. We didn’t come from money or have a big name in the town.”
My grandparents live comfortably, but they’ve never been rich. Daddy did that all on his own. He’s always been proud of being a self-made man, always worn that like a badge of honor. I never questioned what gave him those lofty ambitions, why he wanted so badly to succeed. I sure as hell never knew he was rejected for being poor compared to a powerful family I’d never heard of until a few months ago.
I glance across the way at Devlin. I wonder if he knows all this. If he knows my father came back here to rub his success in the faces of Devlin’s father and all the Darlings for snubbing him back then. Now he’s just as rich as all of them, and he did it all himself.
“Your father’s a proud man, Crystal,” Nonna goes on. “Always was. It was hard on him, and hard on us as parents to see him being scorned the way he was, the way all the scholarship students were back then. The Darlings had big fancy parties, and he wasn’t invited. One night, he and Benny and Angela got together all the scholarship kids and decided to crash one of the parties, thrown right here in this house. They were told their kind wasn’t welcome here. There was quite a brawl over it, let me tell you.”
“Damn,” I say, trying to imagine Daddy and Mr. Darling going at it in the yard. That’s way more exciting than some argument over a patent.
“To be honest, I think your father’s been trying to prove something to himself ever since then,” Nonna says. “Seeing your kids struggle and knowing you can’t do a damn thing to help them is the hardest moment of being a parent. At some point, you can’t protect them anymore, and they learn the truth—that the world is a hard, unforgiving place for all of us.”
I think of Daddy and my brothers trying so hard to shelter me, and my resentment towards them thaws a bit. I know that’s all they’ve ever wanted. To protect me.
“I’m sorry, Nonna,” I say, leaning over to wrap an arm around her and lay my head on her shoulder.
“Well, you know your father,” she says with a chuckle. “He sure made the best of it, didn’t he? Look at all this. From the other side of town to buying a Darling house right out from under their noses.”
“That’s a long way to come in only twenty years,” I agree, marveling for a moment over how fortunate our family is. Because of Daddy’s hard work and determination, we have all of this.