Promises and Pomegranates by Sav R. Miller
Chapter 36
Ariana staresat me as she bites into her tuna sandwich, not saying anything.
In fact, neither sister has said anything in forty-five minutes, and it’s starting to grate on my nerves.
“Okay, what? Why are you two being so fucking quiet?”
Pinching off the crust from her grilled cheese, Stella looks at me. “What should we be talking about?”
“Anything,” I moan, dropping my head to the table. “Come on, you guys, I so don’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.”
They share a look, and Ariana exhales slowly. “Well, there’s... a lot to unpack here.”
“Yeah,” Stella agrees. “For starters, Mamá and Kal? Yikes. Talk about grooming. I kind of hope Papá tells the Elders.”
My temple throbs, the memories from last night like a scalding hot iron bearing down on my brain. “Not really the direction I was hoping this would go.”
I haven’t stopped long enough to really think about the reality of everything that happened, and when Kal showed up at the theater last night, I let jealousy and hurt cloud my judgment. Let him fuck me in a public place, where my entire family could hear.
And, judging by the blush painting my sisters’ cheeks when I arrived at the diner this afternoon, they definitely did hear.
“Hey,” Ari says, pointing a crinkle-cut fry at me. “Beggars can’t be choosers. Either you drive the conversation, or other people pick the topics. Those are the rules of society.”
Stella snorts. “Who made the rules?”
“I did. Just now.” Ariana pulls her phone out, scrolling silently for a few moments, before turning the screen around to face me. A news article is pulled up, timestamped for this morning. SOCIALITE RETURNS TO BOSTON AFTER FAKING KIDNAPPING; FATHER’S COMPANY ANNOUNCES PERSONNEL CHANGES, NEW INVESTMENTS. “Would you rather talk about that?”
The headline makes my blood boil, amplifying my simmering anger toward my parents, burrowing it even deeper. I haven’t seen them since I left the house yesterday; rather than stay in the penthouse like I had been, I went uptown to Nonna’s Millennium Tower apartment, confident in the fact that Kal wouldn’t come find me there.
Not that he couldn’t, but that he would choose not to.
And he never did.
Even though it meant he got my message loud and clear, I still couldn’t help the little seedling of hope that embedded itself in my psyche, wishing he’d come after me again.
That there would be no limit to the number of times he’d chase me to the ends of the earth, no matter how many times I pushed him away.
Clearly, that’s not the case.
My parents never reached out, either, although after leaving my phone in the theater, I suppose I effectively cut off communication with them. Of course, neither of them know I’m aware of Nonna’s apartment, which means they’d never come looking for me here.
I only discovered it after her last New Year’s bender, when she refused to take a cab from a hotel bar down the street, noting she had a secret apartment in the luxury building.
Lucky me, I suppose.
“What’s there to talk about?” I say, pushing the phone away. “At least the world knows Kal didn’t actually kidnap me now.”
“Yeah, but they think you’re a liar.” Ari squints at her phone, pursing her lips. “Or, they would, if a certain rock star’s picture wasn’t pushing you from the spotlight.”
I shrug. “They can think what they want. I know the truth.”
Stella wipes her mouth with a napkin. “Don’t you think it’s odd timing, erasing the kidnapping story and revitalizing the company all at the same time?”
“Not really. With me back in town, how were they going to keep the lies going?”
Shaking her head, Stella sits back in her chair, sighing. “It just seems fishy.”
“That’s business, baby,” Ari says, exaggerating her voice as she speaks.
She and Stella erupt into giggles, their carefree spirits trying their best to lift mine, but as I let my gaze slide past them, glancing out over the harbor beyond our dockside restaurant, sadness floods the cracks of my heart, tainting the evidence that anyone else was ever there in the first place.
“So, what are you gonna do?” Stella asks me, sipping her water. “You’re not in school, your marriage is... in limbo. Are you gonna go after him?”
“He slept with our mom, Stel.” Ariana shoots her a look. “Big ick.”
Stella rolls her eyes. “It was, what, over a decade ago? It’s not like they continued their relationship, and he left Mom and immediately went to Elena.”
My nose wrinkles, although she has a point.
“If you love him,” Stella says, adjusting her glasses, “then you love him. Plain and simple. That doesn’t just go away, no matter the circumstance.”
Sighing, I push my food around on my plate, letting that sentiment soak in, searching for the truth within it.
What do I do with the love in my heart if I can’t funnel it into him?
When I go back to Nonna’s later, armed with tinfoil-wrapped angel food cake and an old iPad Ariana brought for me to hook up to the Wi-Fi, I strip down and lounge on the bed for a while, trying to find comfort in the silence, like Kal always seemed to.
But all it does is remind me he’s not around to help fill it.
The hurt and betrayal I felt from last night comes roaring back, searing my insides as they threaten to overturn every emotional development I’ve had in the last few months.
Rather than try to stuff them down like before, to curl into myself and fold in order to fit other people’s expectations, I let it all wash over me; sobs rack my body as I stare up at the ceiling, aching and grieving for me, for Kal, for my family.
It’s a strange sensation, grieving for what isn’t lost, but missing or absent. Part of me wants to acknowledge the accessibility of these things, while the other part knows I need time to make sense of everything.
That knowledge doesn’t really help, though.
So, instead of lying there and feeling sorry for myself, I slip from the bed, draw a bubble bath and drop in some of Nonna’s essential oils, then dig my journal from my overnight bag and write it all down.
* * *
I don’t hearfrom Kal the rest of the time I’m in Boston. A week passes, and then another, and still... nothing.
Every day that passes, I’m left wondering why he lied to me in the first place. What he gained from making promises and pledges, staining my heart with his darkness, when he didn’t even bother sticking around to see what became of it.
According to my sisters, Mamá’s been staying at her sister’s in Roxbury, not having been back to the house since the night of the recital. So, on the day I return to pack away some of the more sentimental items in my old bedroom, I’m a little stunned to find her sitting on the four-poster bed, flipping through the worn pages of Edgar Allan Poe’s complete works.
When I walk inside, she lands on The Tell-Tale Heart, not glancing up as I cross the threshold. I stand there, frozen, noting the faded yellow bruise dusting her right cheek, from where she said she slipped on a patch of ice on her way to the recital.
My heart skips a beat, knowing better, but trying not to read too much into that.
“You know, I specifically asked your father when you were born not to teach you Italian.” She smooths her fingers over the page, smiling sadly. “I knew from the second I laid eyes on you, that you were a force to be reckoned with. There was immediately so much strength and tenacity, and fire in your beautiful eyes, present in your lungs every time you cried. I worked overtime to undermine any potential advantage you could have over me.”
I don’t say anything, knowing she’s not looking for a response.
“I was jealous of a baby,” she says. “My baby, because I knew she was going to grow up with opportunities and beauty and grace I was never allowed. Everyone who met you was so captivated by this... aura you had. This brightness that drew them to you. And you were good at everything you tried; reading, writing, creating. Even gardening, which I never mastered. Sometimes it seemed like you’d just walk into a room, and plants would bloom.”
She turns a page, exhaling softly. “It felt like I was living in my daughter’s shadow, and your father certainly was never any help. He told you to jump, and you asked how high, desperate to be the perfect little girl in that man’s eyes.”
My cheeks burn, shame settling on my shoulders, weighing me down like a cement brick.
“When your father met Kal, we could tell he needed... well, a lot. His mother had just died, he had no other family. So, we took him in, made him feel like one of our own.” Swallowing, she finally looks up, meeting my gaze across the room. “I remember the first time I felt like maybe he was confused about his feelings toward me, trying to work through them, and I... took advantage of that. Soaked up all the attention he gave me, because your father certainly didn’t give me any. It felt good, after I had you and Ariana, to feel wanted again.”
“When I found out he’d decided to marry you, I just... couldn’t believe it. Not because you weren’t lovable, but here you were, doing exactly what I’d always been afraid of: taking everything that once belonged to me.”
“Is that why you pushed the kidnapping story? To punish me for something that wasn’t even my fault?”
She nods. “I thought if the world turned against your union, maybe he’d give you back. Even had your father send men out to rough you up, thinking maybe Kal would realize he was in over his head.”
A lead weight drops into my throat at the revelation, and I suck in a deep gulp of air, trying to ignore the initial shock settling in. Of course, Papá orchestrated that. So much for blood loyalty.
“Did you ever think maybe I didn’t want to come back? Or that none of what happened between us had anything to do with you?”
“I know it doesn’t make sense to you,” she says, waving her hand dismissively. “You don’t know what lengths people will go to when they’re in love.”
Nausea bubbles inside my stomach, curdling like spoiled milk. It propels me forward, my interest in hearing what she has to say dwindling completely, as it starts to feel like she’s ramping up to a sob story, just to earn sympathy points.
As I reach the edge of the bed, I bring my hand up, lashing through the air with a single pump; my palm cracks against the yellowed skin of her cheekbone, and she lets out a cry, holding her forearm up to block me.
“That’s for trying to wreck my marriage,” I say, rearing back to land another slap on the same cheek. My hand vibrates with the impact, tingles shooting up to my fingers, my print quickly blossoming on her skin. “That is for ruining my childhood, and trying to ruin my adulthood.”
She tries to push me away, but I shove her hand back, curl my fingers into a fist, and whip my knuckles at her face, not even wincing from the immediate onslaught of pain that radiates up my arm.
“And that,” I sneer, shaking my hand out as she chokes on a tooth dislodged by the contact, “is for Kal. You don’t hurt the people you love. You don’t go out of your way to make them suffer.”
Walking to my old bookshelf, I put a couple of trinkets from Nonna in my bag, grab the important files—birth certificate, social security card, and other essential items for starting over—tucked away in a secret compartment in the closet, and head for the door, ignoring her tears the way she ignored mine for years, swapping comfort for criticism every chance she ever got.
“You used to call Kal Hades incarnate,” I say over my shoulder, pausing with one foot out the door. “I get it now. You wanted him to be the villain in your story, so you dressed him up as one. Painted him as a monster, when really, all he ever wanted was a little bit of unconditional love.”
I pull my new phone out, unlocking the screen and pulling up the draft email I have, waiting for me to press send. After spending the entire first few days after the recital writing down my feelings, I began writing down other things, too.
Everything I knew about Ricci Inc.
“I used to want that from you, too.” I adjust a couple of the finer points, adding in more incriminating evidence, and push send. “But then I realized, monsters aren’t capable of returning love. And the longer you spend chasing it from someone who cannot ever give it back, the more of a monster you become in turn.”
Spinning on my heel, I pass through the door, content in my soul with the way I leave her there, knowing the sun is about to set on the entire Ricci empire.
