Seeking Carolina. Terri-Lynne Defino
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is different. Don’t start with me, Jules.”
“I’m not starting anything. You are.”
“What are you, twelve?”
Johanna stiffened, but Julietta laughed and shoved him. “Then come to Emma’s for dinner tonight. We’re all going to be there. If you won’t take money, we can pay you in food. My sister’s as good a cook as Gram was.”
“Thanks but—”
“Charlie, I can’t take this much rejection in one day. You know I’m special that way. I’ll square it with Emma. Come. It’s the least we can do for all you’ve done the last few days.”
Charlie’s shoulders slumped but he smiled fondly. “All right. Thanks.”
“Great. Be there at seven. Bring wine.”
Johanna stirred and stirred. The action soothed. She poured out cups while the others chattered. Will and Caleb were trying to convince their dad to take them snowboarding. Charlie said Charlotte could do it. He’d already promised Tony and Millie he’d make a snowman with them. Julietta told the story about the time Emma went up the mountain on some school trip, and how she nearly killed herself and five others by falling in the middle of the slope. Their words were far away and apart, as if she were a ghost listening from the shadows in an altered world. Johanna tried to shake herself out of it. She hadn’t needed this slip from reality in a long time. Of course, being in Bitterly would trigger it.
The scraping of chairs on the hardwood restored her hearing, her sense of place. Johanna found herself helping Charlie into his big jacket.
“Sorry about the floor.” He pointed to the puddles around his sons’ discarded boots. “I’ll have the boys—”
“Don’t worry about it. Julietta will do it.”
“You sure?”
“I’ll make her more hot chocolate.”
He laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling in deep creases there for as long as she could remember. Back then, they smoothed as quickly as they formed. Today, they did not, and Johanna liked it quite a lot.
“I’ll see you later then?”
“Yup. Later.”
“Come on, boys.” Charlie was out the door before his sons could pull on their boots. Johanna bit down on her lips suddenly buzzing with words like—Stop. Stay. Do you ever think of me? Of that summer? It was so long ago, and they had been so young. In those sweaty months before Labor Day, Charlie McCallan made her happier than she ever thought she could be. And then it was over, just like that.
She dug into the front pocket of her backpack, pulled out two crumpled twenties and stuffed them into the boys’ hands.
“Don’t tell your dad.”
“Wow,” Caleb said. “Thanks, Johanna.”
“Thanks,” Will murmured, shoving the bill into his pocket.
Closing the door behind them, Johanna leaned against it. Dinner. With Charlie. She glared at her sister.
“What?”
“You know what. Heavens to Murgatroyd, Jules. I’m going to murdilate you.”
“You’re welcome.” Julietta handed her the mug of hot-chocolate dregs, kissed her cheek. “And you can clean up the floor.”
* * * *
Johanna lay alone, in the dark, supine on her grandmother’s bed and a hand on her overburdened belly. Emma’s famous macaroni and meatballs sat heavily alongside the pastries Charlie brought—recompense for having to bring his eight-year-old twins, Millie and Tony, to dinner when his older kids stayed late at the slopes. Johanna’s middle nephew, Henry, had been thrilled. He and Tony were classmates, and though Millie was as well, she mostly ignored the boys to instead braid and unbraid the silky strands of Nina’s golden hair. Nina happily took her own turns at Millie’s thick, red curls and Johanna had to wonder if her sister’s childlessness was the choice she always insisted it was.
Gio, the youngest nephew, pestered Henry and Tony, while Ian, the oldest, seemed to share a special bond with his Aunt Julietta. Most of her evening was spent helping the ten-year-old with his math homework. In the thick of it all, Johanna had felt as full of love as she had been of the food.
No one misses the funeral of a Sig’lian’. We make mean ghosts.
Gram always said Italians loved a funeral; it brought family home, and brooked no excuse.
In the dark silence beyond midnight, listening to her belly gurgle along with the creaks and groans of the old farmhouse she grew up in, Johanna was wishing she’d taken her chances with the ghost. The sensation of being only a guest in her sister’s home, in her sisters’ lives descended. Being in Bitterly forced her to acknowledge all the good things she was missing to avoid the bad. Until coming home, she’d been happy in Cape May, in her bakery at the beach, with the hundreds of friendly strangers who populated her life.
Johanna groaned upright, and moved to the window. Outside, the moon shined brightly on the snow and the world existed only in shades of blue. Snow, snow, everywhere—snow. A cathedral of trees. A holy realm of ice. The only church she had ever needed.
She used to imagine her mother playing in the yard, building snow castles or chasing fireflies. But Mommy had never lived in Bitterly, a fact Johanna didn’t know until Emmaline and Julietta came to live with them too.
Johanna turned away from the window, those thoughts. She moved about Gram’s room by moonlight. It never changed, but for the buttercream yellow paint that had replaced Gram’s more sensible white back when she and her sisters were small, and grieving. The dresser, oiled and smooth as honey, always scented with the lavender sachets kept in every drawer. Johanna opened the top one and breathed in, struck suddenly by the notion of getting rid of all the clothes. Who would have the heart to scoop the nightgowns from the drawers, the dresses from the closet, and haul them off to some charity? Johanna shuddered. She could not do it. She would rather burn everything, and that made her shudder again.
On top of the dresser sat Gram’s jewelry box. Adelina Coco was Sicilian, but she was also a New Englander. One good dress and a pair of sensible heels was all she needed. The plain box Poppy had made for her one Christmas, when they were newly married and quite poor, was mostly empty. Johanna lifted the lid.
The ribboned lock of Carolina’s dark hair.
The crumbling letter Johanna knew by heart.
The gold Virgin Mary medal Gram never took off, along with her wedding rings and Pop’s.
And the locket.
Johanna’s breath caught in her throat. She had forgotten about this talisman, this magical thing. Picking it up by the chain, she let it twirl in the moonlight.
“It belonged first to Poppy’s grandmother,” Gram had told her. “Her own nona gave it to her when she left Sicily for America to be married. See the initials? FMC. That is for Florentina Coco.”
“What does the M stand for?”
“Maddelena, I think. Do you want to hear the story or ask questions?”
“Hear the story. Please.”
“Good girl. Back then, when someone left the old country, those left behind knew it was for good. Florentina’s grandmother had already lost many sons and many grandchildren to America. But Florentina was her favorite, I am told, and so she put something very special inside the locket before waving good-bye. Can you guess what it was?”
“A picture?”
“No, not a picture. She put a wish inside.”
“Sure, Gram.”
“You don’t believe me? You doubt it can be true? There was a time, Johanna, when we women