Unraveled (Guzzi Duet Book 1)(81)

“The grave is well kept,” Cara said, wanting to fill the silence.

“I come a couple of times a month to say hello, and replace the flowers.”

“Do you think she hears you?”

“Do you?” Tommas asked right back.

Cara blinked away the tears threatening to fall. “We’re the same, her and me. Even our DNA is identical, Tommas. It’s like that time when we were five, and I fell off the swings at the park while she was home. I broke my wrist, and she screamed and held hers the whole way from the house to the park to find me; everyone thought she was crazy. Of course, she hears me. She’s always been inside of me, listening. I was the one who wasn’t talking for the longest time.”

“I think there’s a difference between her and you, now.”

“Oh?”

“She’s not alive, anymore, Cara. You are. What was cannot now be.”

She still felt like she was living for two some days.

Sometimes, it helped.

Other times, she thought she was failing somehow.

“I still wish they had cremated her,” Cara admitted. “Then I could have taken a piece of her with me.”

Tommas frowned. “I think you’ve taken quite a lot of her with you, if you think about it.”

Maybe.

Cara didn’t know.

“Are you going to tell me what that whole discussion was between you and Abriella this morning?” Cara asked, keeping her back turned to her brother. “I listened to the whole thing, by the way.”

Tommas snorted. “I figured you did.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I have another question instead, Cara.”

She pivoted to face him. “Shoot.”

“Are you happy?”

Cara didn’t even have to think about it, not for long. “I wasn’t. I was living in a black hole all the time, and I couldn’t escape from it. I felt like I was drowning nonstop.”

“And then you weren’t,” Tommas supplied.

“I guess not.”

“Would that happen to be because of someone?”

“Do you mean Gian Guzzi?”

Tommas smiled a little. “Yeah, that’s who I mean.”

“I think he helped,” Cara admitted, “but I think he made it possible for me to drag myself out of that black hole, too. And maybe that’s the more important part.”

Her brother nodded. “Then that’s all that matters. It’s all I need to know. The rest is details, and I’ve never cared for those.”

Neither had Cara.





“Come sit, go through these albums with me,” Abriella said from the couch, as Cara walked into the living room. “I’m sick and tired of doing wedding things, and I need a break.”

From her position, Cara could see some of the albums were weddings.

“That kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?”

Abriella shrugged. “It’s not mine, so not exactly.”

Who was Cara to argue with the bride-to-be? She joined Abriella on the couch, curious about where Tommas was. After he had brought her back from the cemetery, he had disappeared upstairs. He hadn’t come back down since.

“Maybe not this one,” Abriella muttered, tossing an unopened photo album aside.

“What was that one?”

“Damian and Lily’s wedding.”

Oh.

The wedding that Lea was supposed to be in with Cara, but had died before she could attend. Cara did not need physical proof of how messed up she had probably looked that day, not the reminders of how it had made her feel to plaster on a smile and get shit done when she had been two seconds away from taking her own life. She opted not to open the album.

“Will you come for the wedding?” Abriella asked. “I know Tommy really wants you there.”

Cara smiled. “I’ll try. No promises. I have a co-op set up with a woman’s shelter to do work in the summer, too, and I won’t be able to take time off when it’s required hours.”

“Is it really that bad to be here?”

“Not as bad as I thought it would be. But it’s not always easy, either.”

Abriella frowned and looked away. “I get that. I guess if it was Alessa, I wouldn’t want all the reminders, either.”

“It’s not the reminders,” Cara said quietly. “It’s what isn’t here. Lea isn’t here, not like she is at home. And as much as it sometimes suffocates me, I would rather her be everywhere than nowhere.”

“Huh.”

Cara cleared her throat, willing away the sudden emotions lodging there. “It’s hard to explain.”

“No, I think you did pretty well there, actually.”

Cara knew all too well that Abriella Trentini was not unaccustomed to loss. In a few short months, she had lost her grandfather, both of her parents, and her brother. All that she had left now for her close family was her surviving sister. And Tommas, she had him, too.

The pain may not have been the same, but it was familiar enough. It surely stung and ached and ate away at Abriella in her quiet moments, much like it did for Cara in hers.

She didn’t doubt that.

“All right, enough of this,” Abriella said, blinking away the wetness gathering in her eyes. “No tears, or Tommas has a fit. Let’s look at some pictures, huh?”