Prologue
Sofia
“Your father is dead, Sophia.”
My mother says this to me in her thick accent, still more Russian than American, despite how often I hear my father telling her that she needs to work on blending in. Even at twelve years old, though, I know it would be impossible for my mother to blend in anywhere. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, lithe and long-necked as the swans that we see swimming around the lake in Central Park on our daily walks, blue-eyed and blonde-haired, everything I’m not. I’m short and round even for my age, with dark hair and thick eyebrows like my father.
My father.The man who always smells like vanilla tobacco, who picks me up every day when he comes home from work and spins me in a circle, who brings me books, who encouraged me every day since I was eight and decided I wanted to play the violin. Every day he asks me what new thing I learned, asks me to show him, even though I know he’s very busy. He must be, because there’s always men at the house, important-looking men in expensive-looking suits, men who look at my mother disapprovingly and whisper to my father.
But now my mother is telling me that he’s dead.Dead.It’s such a final word, and it feels impossible. My father can’t be dead, he was too full of life. It’s impossible to think that I’ll never hear his boisterous laugh again, never play the violin for him again, never breathe in the rich scent of tobacco from his shirt collar when he picks me up and swings me around.
I don’t cry. I can’t. I know I should—my mother is crying, her mascara running down her face in thick black streaks, but the grief feels like a knot in my throat, a wall in my chest, hot and heavy and choking. I can’t believe it. I won’t.
I don’t realize that I’ve screamed those words aloud until my mother recoils, letting go of my hands just long enough for me to run to my room and slam the door behind me.In here,I think,none of this can find me. None of it will be real.I pick up the latest book my father brought home for me, an illustrated copy ofGrimm’s Fairy Tales, which my mother said was too dark for a twelve-year-old. My father took it away from me, and then when she was gone, winked and handed it back. “Find a good hiding place for it,” he said to me. “There’s a lesson in that book, an important one.”
“What is it, papa?” I’d asked, taking the book back. The cover was smooth and new, the pages still full of that new-book smell. I couldn’t wait to breathe it in.
He’d leaned down, pushing a loose piece of hair out of my face, and smiled sadly. “All fairytales have a dark side.”
I hadn’t read it yet. But now I clung to it, pressing the book against my chest as if it could keep me safe, as if it could change everything that my mother had said to me. In here, surrounded by my books, my violin, everything that my father and I shared, I can pretend that it’s not true.
But somewhere deep down, I know it is.
* * *
I still can’t believeit at the funeral, either. Not when I see his body in the casket, his face waxy with makeup, and not when they lower him into the ground. Not when more of the important men in suits come to talk to my pale-faced mother, and I hear the name that I’ve so often overheard when they come to our house—Rossi. I sneak close enough to hear snippets of the conversation:you’ll be safe…provided for…Giovanni took precautions…his daughter…
But safe from what? My life has always been safe and comfortable, full of joy and love from both of my parents. My mother shows it in a different way, she’s always been more stoic than my father, more reserved. But they love each other, too, I know it. I see it in their faces when they look at each other, in the way my father sneaks kisses from her around corners when they think I can’t see.
Used to sneak.How will I ever get used to thinking of him in the past tense?
I can’t bear it. I think that I’ll be able to get away from it all when we go home, but our house is full of people all draped in dreary black, the women carrying casserole dishes and comforting my mother. I can see the women looking sideways at her after they console her, though, whispering about her behind her back. Two-faced, she would call them.
I hate them all.
At the first opportunity, I run upstairs to my room, intent on hiding from the crowd downstairs. But only a few minutes have passed when there’s a knock at my door.
I ignore it, but it comes again. “Go away!” I yell, hating how choked my voice sounds. “Leave me alone.”
The door opens anyway. A tall man walks in, one that I don’t recognize, but that I saw at the funeral with the other important-looking men. He’s very handsome, with a thick mustache, wearing a wool greatcoat that looks expensive. He steps inside and shuts the door behind him, crouching down so that he’s at my level.
“This must be very hard for you,” he says in a low voice. “You must have loved your father very much.”
I look away. I don’t know who this man is, but something inside of me pings nervously at the sight of him, some instinct that tells me he’s dangerous. That something about him, and the other men who come to the house, is connected to why my father is dead.
Why he’ll never come home again.
The man lets out a long sigh. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk to me. But I came to bring you something. Your father gave this to me the night that he died, for you. Read it when you’re ready.” He sets something down on the floor, a few inches away from me, as if I’m a small dog that might bite if he comes too close.
And then he stands up, and leaves without another word.
I reach for the envelope. It’s thin and light. At first I don’t want to open it. These are my father’s last words to me, the last thing he’ll ever say. It’s beginning to dawn on me that he’s really gone, that no amount of pretending can change it, and once I read this letter, everything that’s left of him will truly be in the dirt of the cemetery a few miles down the road, rotting into nothingness.
So I stand up, and slip the letter into my violin case. I’ll read it one day.
But not yet.
Sofia