He released my hands and stuck a thumb at the mess. “I’ll take care of this when I get back.” Then he left, swallowed up by the bright glow of the sunlight.
The front door shut with a soft click, leaving us in a dim room filled with thick fumes and utter disarray.
“The beautiful years,” Maggie Beautiful cried. “To call them that, we must know tragedy first. Oh, tragedy.” She cried even harder. “Oh, why do we have to cry to make the beautiful years beautiful? Why do we have to bleed to pay the price for roses!”
The roles seemed to be reversed. I sat on the sofa while Maggie Beautiful lay with her head in my lap, her knees curled up to her chest. I stroked her head while she cried. We both seemed to be drunk on sadness, just handling our heartbreak in contrasting ways.
“Maggie Beautiful, tell me something.”
She looked up at me with swollen eyes. Her cheeks were mascara-stained, her nose bright red.
“Why didn’t Brando just go to college here? I know about the scholarships. But there are opportunities here. Whenever I bring it up, he just shrugs. Reasons.”
She sniffed. “The scholarships were full. Even local colleges cost money, Doll. And after Elliott went to heaven, Brando changed. I don’t think his heart was in it. Before he had drive. After Elliott, all he had was…testardo—” she shook her fist “—pigheaded anger! Even though he has a fund from Luca, he refuses to touch it.”
I mulled this over for some time, thinking of Brando going to see Luca Fausti out of the blue. No, he never did anything spontaneous. If he went to see him, he had a reason.
“Luca has a fund for Brando?”
“Yes,” she breathed out. “Luca comes from money—the kind that can buy private islands on a whim. It’s not worth the hassle of taking anything from them. It comes with lifelong strings. The Fausti famiglia bought my parents off and sent them back to Italy. My parents are ashamed of me. Told me that I was going to burn in hell for sleeping with a married man.” She took a deep breath and it seemed to tremble out.
“I was a baby when I got pregnant with Brando. And they left me. Gave me this house. Told me I was on my own. Put enough money in the bank for me to survive for a while. Luca paid all of the hospital bills, though I fought him on that. At his urging, my parents sent an old aunt of mine to live here with us until I was of age. I just couldn’t understand it. Still don’t.”
Her hand came down to her stomach, as though she were remembering. “I loved Brando from the moment I knew I had a baby in my belly. And my parents stopped loving me. How could they? If I was only a baby and I loved beyond what I could see, why couldn’t they still love me? I was their baby.”
She cried harder and I longed to ease some of her sadness. After some time of me shushing her, she asked me to direct the conversation away from her parents.
“What happened with Luca? How did he kill the sheriff’s wife?”
“The situation with us drove him to drink. He wanted Brando, you know. But I refused to give him up.” She paused. “Oh, but God have mercy on my soul, he has the most gorgeous eyes. Eyes that could capture you and then use you against your own will. Those eyes made you feel his love, whether you wanted to or not.”
I felt compelled to ask. The man made me curious. “He’s beautiful? Luca?”
“No,” she breathed. “That’s a simple term for what Lucious Fausti is. It’s not just his looks. It’s the power behind the man. Fausti men race powerful cars for the fun of it. Their virility is unmatched. It’s hard to even describe in words…” She drifted for a while and then blinked, forcing more tears down her cheeks. “Where was I?”
I understood all too well the man she had described, and I didn’t need the reminder. “Luca killed the sheriff’s wife.”
“Oh, that.” She bit her lip. “After Brando was born, we argued. A lot. He got drunk. Diane, that was Stone’s wife, was taking a stroll down the street. Luca still claims he has no recollection of hitting anyone. He should have just left town. That’s what he was after, leaving