Blood and Fire (McClouds & Friends #8)(130)

He marched up the walkway. Lily was in trouble. Personal hygiene could wait. But it was unfortunate to walk up to Grandma Pina’s door looking like a desperado. She was not the type to see through to a guy’s inner beauty.

He rang the bell, a hollow ding-dong. Several seconds passed and the door jerked open a couple of inches, blocked by the security chain.

Grandma Pina glared at him from the narrow slit. There was no recognition in her gaze. “What do you want?”

He knew better than to smile. “Hi, Grandma Pina. It’s me, Bruno.”

Her face froze, eyes widened for a moment before they squinched tight again. Her chin thrust forward. “I don’t believe you!”

He shrugged. “It’s me,” he said again. “Why would anyone lie about being me?” Or voluntarily claim you as a relative?

Seeing her face gave him a queasy feeling. Pina Ranieri had been a beauty in her youth, when se’d been courted by and married to Rosa and Tony’s oldest brother, Domenico. Her daughter had resembled her, but what he saw now was a chilling glimpse of how his mother would have aged if she’d taken a wrong turn in life early on and focused on nothing but how the world had let her down.

Not that Mamma had any chance to take a wrong turn. The world really had let her down, in the worst possible way. She’d reached the end of the line at the age of thirty-two. Which, coincidentally, was the milestone he would hit on his own next birthday. Huh. That fun fact hadn’t occurred to him until now.

All thanks to Grandma Pina. He looked at the disappointment and anger etched on her face, furrowing her brow, pinching her nostrils, puckering her mouth. So like his mother’s, and yet so horribly unlike her.

“You’ve grown,” she said, still suspiciously.

“It happens,” he said. “I was twelve last time you saw me. At Mamma’s funeral.” Not that you saw me often. Never if I saw you first.

“Don’t you give me any of that back talk,” she warned, as if she’d heard his smart-ass thoughts.

He squelched a snotty reply. “May I come in?”

“What do you want?” she demanded, again.

He bit his lip and tried again. “May I tell you about it inside?”

She slammed the door. The chain rattled. The door opened.

He walked past her into a house he barely remembered. Grandma Pina hadn’t invited him and Mamma to come there often. Bruno’s very existence was an irritation to her. A living reminder of her great disappointment in her daughter. Plus, he had tended to break things.

The living room was crowded with puffy furniture covered with shiny, impermeable plastic wrap. A glass coffee table was covered with little crystal doodads and ceramic flower sculptures. Pictures of kittens, flowers, sunsets, and seascapes hung on the walls. Spic-and-span. Dead and embalmed.

She gestured toward the couch with a martyred air.

“No, I’ll stand,” he said. “This won’t take long. I just wanted to ask if you knew what happened to my mother’s stuff after she died.”

She looked affronted. “Well, after all these years, I never had any idea that you’d ever want any of that garbage! I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but I certainly never—”

“I wasn’t insinuating anything,” he hastened to say. “I just wondered if you had it, or knew who had disposed of it.”

“Well, I went through it afterward. Packed up a few things that were mine to begin with, mind you, things that I wanted back! Most of it was trash. She didn’t have a pot to piss in. Pathetic.”

He unclenched his fists and kept his voice even. “I’m looking for one thing in particular. Did you remember an antique jewelry box? It came from Grandpa’s side of the family. It was his mother’s, from the old country. Mamma had it, when I was a kid. About so big”—he indicated with his hands—“and covered with mother of pearl.”

Grandma Pina’s shoulders jerked in an angry shrug. “I don’t remember it, but I suppose you can look through those boxes if you like. It’s not much to look through.”

His heart sank. The box was memorable. If Grandma Pina hadn’t seen it, it probably wasn’t there. But he had to be sure.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’d appreciate that.”



He sighed. “I’ll go down alone, if you like,” he offered. “Just tell me which boxes they are. Point them out from the top of the stairs.”

Her lips tightened into a prissy arc. “No, I’ll show you.”

He followed her down. The room was lit by a single hanging bulb, and stuffed with boxes. She led him through a corridor between chest-and shoulder-high stacks of God knew what and into a dark corner.

There, on a raised wooden flat, was a pile of battered, dusty cardboard boxes. They were set apart from the others, a few feet of security distance around them, as if they were somehow contaminated.

She jerked her chin toward them. “Be my guest.”

“Thanks,” he murmured. His stomach fluttered nastily as he touched the packing tape on the topmost box. Grandma Pina just stood there, looking like a lemon was stuck in her esophagus.

“You could just leave me here to go through these, if you have things to do,” he offered. “You don’t have to stay.”

She sniffed. “Hardly.”