“Easier to understand why you get to be this way ... and everyone else is the way they are, too?”
Honestly curious, she waited for his reply.
The little boy blinked, surprise darting over his young face for a split second. “No one’s ever asked me that before.”
“No?”
“No.”
Penny shoved her hands into the pockets of her black windbreaker, telling him, “Maybe because they don’t know how—they can’t understand anyway.”
“Maybe. And it’s not easy. It just is.”
Penny didn’t point out how he said the same thing about the truth. Whether he knew it or not, yes, he did deal with his strange uniqueness in a yes or no, black or white manner because it was easier for him than delving deeper.
It showed his youth. Possibly one of the few things that did. What he lacked in actual age and experience, he simplified things down to just being.
Cross lifted his brow and smiled, a flash of arrogance showing in the action that almost had her laughing when he added, “But you still didn’t tell me why, and I didn’t forget.”
Smart kid.
In a lot of damn ways.
“Because I had to,” she said, knowing all too well it wouldn’t satisfy him, but it also wasn’t a lie. “I left because I had to.”
“That’s ...” Cross’s brow furrowed. “Well, why?”
“Because it was the right thing to do. The only thing I could do.”
“Do what, though?”
“Leave,” she replied.
Cross let out a huff, gaze narrowing in on her again with a new gleam. “I know what you’re doing.”
Penny grinned. “Yeah?”
“Saying the truth.”
“But?”
“Without details,” he said, defeated.
She only shrugged.
Fair was fair.
Her godson might have card tricks of his own—although being able to read people at his age was way more amazing than just a card trick—but she had a few, too.
Cross shook his head. “Uncle Luca told them you were different.”
That made her pause.
All over.
Penny turned to stone at just the mere mention of Luca. She had been content to come back to this place, say goodbye and hope, and then leave it all behind if that’s what came of her choices. She’d forced herself to stop thinking about the people she kept leaving behind, too. Sacrifices had to be made, after all.
That didn’t stop it from hurting.
Cross observed her in silent stillness, waiting for a reply from her that wouldn’t come. It couldn’t. “He likes you a lot, too.”
Penny’s throat flexed when she managed to ask, “What?”
“Uncle Luca. When people miss things—things that mean something—their eyes change. More distant. Like they’re looking at something far away. Something I can’t see. You did what he did when he told them he found you. But you did it now because I talked about him. See, same thing.”
This kid was ... something else.
She also couldn’t afford to stand there and keep talking to him even though every single molecule in her being wanted to do exactly that. He was amazing. It took a single conversation with the kid to realize just how much she had missed out on where he was concerned.
“I really should go,” Penny said, moving a step deeper into the forest. The same way she had come.
The shout from behind her made her next step hesitate.
“Cross! Get back to the house, son! Time to eat!”
Penny’s head snapped to the side, gaze darting over her shoulder through the trees to find the form of a man coming to stand on the rear porch of the three-level home. Like his son, she hadn’t laid eyes on Nazio in as many years.
Not much had changed.
He was older, yes, but his playful grin as he called for his child still felt like a welcomed sight to her.
“Cross!” he called again.
The little boy just a few feet away looked her way with a shrug. “You’re gonna leave now, huh?”
“I have to.”
He nodded once. “Yeah, you keep doing that to people, I guess. Leaving.”
Penny blinked away the veil of tears that shrouded her vision. “I don’t want to, though.”
“Cross Nazio Donati—time to eat, kiddo!”
As if on cue, Cross’s stomach growled. He didn’t even look sheepish about it.
“The interlude—the part of the song that repeats, right?” he asked her.
She smiled. “Yeah, what about it?”
“Mine feels like a hug.”
Penny stilled.
He couldn’t know that ...
It wasn’t possible.
“It does,” he said again. “It feels like a hug when I hear it. I feel the same. Light at first. But then it tightens, muffles. Like arms wrapping around me, bringing me closer, getting warmer and tighter.”
“I composed a lullaby for you. That’s all.”
Cross kicked at the dirt when his father