Carlo reaches across the table. He takes my hand in his, his jaws tight, his eyes shadowy. “They care about you,” he says. “It’s been a long time since—they’ve retreated into themselves, especially Mother, but you, Hazel, you’ve brought them out in a way I never dreamed of. There’s just something about you. You’re kind, but fierce. Determined, but flexible. Beautiful and fiery and empathetic and, dammit, Hazel, you’re just the best woman I’ve ever known. That’s what I’m trying to say.”
I cough back tears, sort of disbelieving that he’s saying this. Annoyed, too, because in a day or two, he’ll go back to pretending he doesn’t care about me.
“You can’t keep doing this,” I whisper. But I’m holding his hand tighter each second.
“Doing what?”
“Saying things that make me want you and then pretending like I mean nothing to you. It’s not fair.”
“You could never mean nothing to me,” he says, moving his thumb over my knuckles, caressing. “I just … it’s hard for me, Hazel. It’s really hard for me.”
“Because of what happened to you and your family?” I whisper.
“What do you know about it?” He doesn’t let go of my hand, but his grip gets looser. His eyes flit to the sky, the railing, to our untouched food. The air even gets colder. Somehow.
“I’m not blind,” I say. “I see Alda’s scar. Emily’s wheelchair. How worried you were about her earlier today. I know something happened to your brother, your father. Once, I heard Alda and Emily talking about a woman named Jasmine. It shocked me because Alda was cursing about her, calling her all kinds of names. And Alda hardly ever curses, does she? But they stopped when I walked in. Something happened, didn’t it, something bad?”
He takes a deep breath, the same kind a man would take when he’s just come up from almost drowning. “This is not appropriate conversation for dinner, either. Sebastian! Some whiskey and two glasses, please.”
“Oh, I’m okay with champagne.”
He smiles, but it’s not really a smile. Not a sneer, either. More just like his face gets super sad, super fast. “Trust me. You’ll want this whiskey. But let’s finish our food first. It would be a shame to waste it.”
So, we go through the motions of having a lovely romantic meal as this unsaid thing hangs between us. My mind does backflips trying to figure it out. I mean, you don’t exactly have to be on some Einstein genius trip to get the bones of it. Some sort of attack, some sort of horrible disaster. But I need the details. What happened to these people?
After the entrees, Carlo tells Sebastian to hold off on the dessert for a while. He pours us two glasses of whiskey—his a lot bigger than mine—and then wanders over to the balcony railing. His broad back is heaving up and down. I get the sense that he’s trying to psych himself up. I don’t think he’s ever talked about this before.
“Years ago,” he says, “I knew this woman. Her name was Jasmine. It’s funny, Hazel, because I thought I cared about her. I thought I knew what it meant to really have feelings for a woman. But now …”
He trails off. My chest is tight. I want to go to him but I know that it would break the spell. He has never looked more like a shadow, standing there in the semidarkness.
“Anyway, we were together for a few months. I let her get close. That was when Father was the don of the Family, so I had less responsibility. I still had my duties, but this crushing weight, knowing that it’s up to you to keep your men’s families fed and sheltered and clothed, it had yet to press down on me. I had more free time. We did things together. It almost felt normal.”
I have to fight the urge to snap jealously. This annoys me. It’s not the right time, for one thing. And what right do I have to be jealous? This was years ago. Plus, he said he didn’t even care about her.
“One day, she suggested that we take a picnic in Central Park. She chose the section of the park. She persuaded me to bring the whole family: Father, Mother, Emily, Angel. She got me to put my family right where she wanted them. We arrived at the park—I brought Nario, too, because we were rarely apart in those days—and Jasmine had this boat set up