Chapter 8
I asked my mother to leave the house before Livia woke.
She begged.
Not loudly.
That would have been easier to hate.
She begged quietly.
“Please do not take my granddaughter from me.”
I looked at her.
“You helped take her mother.”
Her face collapsed.
“I didn’t mean to.”
“That does not resurrect Elena.”
Detective Vale arrested her on conspiracy and obstruction.
My mother did not fight.
When officers led her through the foyer, Livia appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Nonna?”
My mother stopped.
I closed my eyes.
Livia came down two steps.
“Where are you going?”
My mother broke.
“I made a terrible mistake, little one.”
Livia looked at me.
“Is Nonna bad too?”
That question nearly ended me.
I crouched at the bottom of the stairs.
“Nonna did something very wrong.”
“Like Bianca?”
“Different. But wrong.”
Livia touched her bandage.
“Will she cut hair?”
“No.”
My mother sobbed.
“I would never hurt you.”
Livia looked at her grandmother for a long time.
“But you hurt Mommy?”
Silence.
My mother could not answer.
That answer was enough.
Livia turned and ran back upstairs to Rosalie.
My mother’s knees buckled.
The officers held her up.
I did not.
The weeks that followed were a storm.
Reporters outside the gates.
Moretti businesses raided.
Charity accounts frozen.
Dr. Ferri arrested at the airport with cash inside medical files.
Carlo took a plea first.
Coward.
He confirmed my mother warned him Elena planned to leave.
He confirmed Donatella ordered the bombing.
He confirmed Bianca had been sent to retrieve the barrette before and after Elena’s death.
Bianca testified too.
Her testimony was shaking, ugly, incomplete, but useful.
She received charges for assaulting Livia, evidence tampering, and conspiracy.
Donatella received more.
Much more.
My mother refused a plea.
Not because she was innocent.
Because she said she wanted Livia to one day know she told the full truth.
I did not know what to do with that.
Rosalie stayed.
Not as staff.
As family, though neither of us said it at first.
She cut the rest of Livia’s hair gently into a soft pixie so the shaved patch would blend as it grew.
I sat on the bathroom floor while Livia stared in the mirror.
She touched the short pieces.
“I look like a boy.”
Rosalie smiled.
“You look like a warrior.”
Livia looked at me.
“Daddy?”
I swallowed.
“You look like my brave girl.”
She smiled a little.
Then she asked for a pink bow.
Rosalie found one.
That night, Livia slept in my bed.
The broken barrette sat on my nightstand.
I watched her breathe and understood Elena had tried to run not because she did not love me.
But because she loved our daughter enough to escape everything I had normalized.
I whispered into the dark.
May you like
“I’m sorry, Elena.”
For the first time since she died, I felt like she might have heard me.
