around the room, I made sure I had all my belongings and then left. I hoisted my suitcase into the trunk of my car and didn’t bother checking out of the motel. I’d prepaid, planning on leaving early the next morning.
But my mother’s final words had lit a fire of urgency, and I refused to sit still, to give in to the paralyzing emotions that threatened to pull me into their undertow.
I had a full tank of gas and no idea where to go. So I just drove.
I thought about my father. Gianni Russo. How had he met my mother? How had a sheltered young Moretti woman come across an unsuitable boy not of her echelon?
Their love had been so powerful that they’d been willing to risk everything to be together.
I never truly believed that kind of love existed, but clearly it did. My parents were lucky enough to have found it, but not lucky enough to be able to grow old together.
They were tragic, star-crossed lovers.
Grieving and with only the help of Sister Agatha, my mother had somehow found the courage to escape Italy and come to the States. How had she done it? Sheer force of will? She came from the bloodline of Italian mercenaries. No doubt, the strength of her resolve was buried deep in her DNA, perhaps the reason for her tenacity.
I’d never heard of a family of Italian mercenaries in existence since The Crusades. It sounded ridiculous. And yet, my mother’s words rang true. I knew it in my bones.
Afternoon turned to evening as I drove farther and farther from the plot of land that was my mother’s final resting place.
I replayed pieces of my childhood in my mind, pouring over every memory, every conversation I could muster. I tried to see those recollections through the lens of an adult, knowing what I knew now. But it would take longer than a car ride to nowhere to unravel the myopic emotions that steadfastly clung to my memories.
Just because she’d told me the truth didn’t mean I was suddenly full of forgiveness. Compassion, maybe, in the distant corners of my angry heart.
Guilt, definitely.
Her letter was only a window into her psyche. Now she was gone and had left me with half-truths. The window was shut. And just like that, the numbness of the adrenaline faded away, leaving a tempest of wrath.
Hours later, my skin still tight with anger, knuckles white from gripping the wheel, I knew I had to think about stopping for the night. I’d been heading east for hours and exhaustion was setting in.
I drove through yet another city that looked like all the rest, every stop at a red light an excuse for my rage to flicker again.
Estrangement from my mother wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I’d been safe and loved, but it didn’t make up for the lack of friends, the lack of attachments I longed for, or my inability to connect with others because I’d always been terrified that as soon as I made a friend, Mama would rip me away and drag me to a new place.
It wasn’t a true sob story, but it was my story.
“Mama, why?” I asked, hitting the steering wheel.
My mother’s letter had told me just enough to crack the lid on a Pandora’s box of my background. I wanted to know it all, but I hadn’t been given the chance.
And then I had the worst thought of my entire life: My mother might’ve died to protect me, but what if it had also been a way out of her own personal pain? What if she no longer had the strength to continue living? She’d never dated. She’d never made connections, either. What if she’d been too tired, weighed down by her past, knowing her future would be just more of the same?
She’d been completely alone.
Now I was completely alone, destined to feel what she felt.
Tears I thought were long gone suddenly welled at the corners of my eyes and blurred my vision. There was a faceless enemy tracking me, bludgeoning me with anxiety and fear.
I pulled off the highway, not bothering to look at the signs. I drove through the small town, passing quiet streets.
When I found an empty parking lot, I turned into it, put the car in park, and then let loose the sobs I’d been attempting to hold back.
They came from deep inside, from the depths of my soul and marrow. I purged it all. I flogged my heart with thousands