Page 3

We were all in black for the graveside service. Vivi’s fiery locks, spread across the floor and lit by the golden rays of the sun, seemed like the only bright color in the room. Everything else was drained of color.
I felt colorless, too—flavorless and used up, like gum that had already been chewed. Our foster mother Lucia’s graceful, shabby old house had always felt like a benevolent entity in its own right, one that enveloped and protected its people.
Now, it just felt sad, tired, and empty. Robbed of its very heart.
Well. It had been. Literally. Figuratively too, I guessed. The warmth, the benevolence, that had been Lucia herself. Now it was just an old house—faded, creaking, and slightly shabby. For the first time, I saw the marks and scars, the stains and cracks I’d never noticed before, even though I’d lived there through all of my teenage years.
With Lucia in residence, the place had been graced with a flattering filter that obscured all its flaws. Lucia had that kind of magic. She cast it onto people, too. She had always made us feel somehow bigger, better, finer than we actually were.
In her eyes, we were already our best, ideal potential selves. And we could accomplish any fabulous, improbable thing. In her mind, it was just a matter of time.
But she was gone, and the faith she’d had in us vanished with her.
So much for my best self. Right now, I couldn’t even remember what was so damn great about it—not without Lucia to remind me.
She used to tell us she had an eye for treasure. That was her special gift—recognizing hidden treasure, whether it was art, antiques, books, or people. That was why she’d fostered and then adopted the three of us. It made us all feel so special. We’d needed that so badly, back in the old days. Being chosen had been so healing.
And now the chooser was gone.
It was a good thing Vivi and Nell were here with me, because if I’d been alone with these feelings, I would’ve slid down into a very dark place.
As it was, I was hanging on by my fingernails.
“I hadn’t been up here to see her for over a month.” Nell’s voice was bleak and small. “I just kept thinking, well, we’ll be celebrating her birthday soon enough, so I kept on taking extra shifts. Putting it off. Like I had all the time in the world.”
“Same,” I said wearily. “Same thoughts. Same regrets. I’ve been so swamped lately. Two albums to cut. Mandrake about to go on tour. Blah blah blah. I thought it was all so goddamn important.”
“Lucia’s birthday was today,” Vivi said. “We should have been drinking port wine, eating schiacciata all’uva. Remember how I used to tease her to get with the new millennium and make fudge brownies or Rice Krispies treats like a normal, red-blooded American? But right now, I’d give anything to crunch that weird grape focaccia and get the lecture about the sacred importance of tradition.”
“Oh God, Vivi,” I pleaded. “Don’t do that. Don’t get us going again.”
The warning came too late. Lucia’s schiacciata all’uva set us all off.
The three of us didn’t have family traditions of our own. We’d lost our families of origin a long time ago. Lucia had plucked us out of the system and given us all the noise and mess of a real family—and with it, the weight and ballast of the past.
She’d even given us her name—D’Onofrio. It was a precious gift for all of us.
We avoided each other’s eyes once the sobbing eased. At this point, my sob muscles ached like they’d been beaten black and blue. Enough already.
Nell’s fingers found mine and squeezed. “I’m so sorry you had to find her all alone,” she whispered. “I don’t know what I would’ve done if it had been me.”
I sucked in a big breath and let it out slowly, trying not to see it—but the image of Lucia crumpled on the floor would stay with me forever. “You would have done the same as me,” I said. “I was nervous already. I’d called her two evenings in a row and she didn’t pick up. That’s not like her. So I guess I was braced for it. Kind of, I suppose. Not that being braced makes any damn difference in the end.”
“That sick bastard could have called an ambulance when he saw she was having a heart attack,” Vivi said. “It would have cost him nothing. He murdered her, even if the coroner called it natural causes. Since when is being scared to death a natural cause?”
“The thief certainly was an idiot and a dickhead, aside from being a sick bastard,” Nell said. “He takes her jewelry, her computer and her TV, and leaves her Fabergé picture frame and her Cellini bronze? Wow.”
“Speaking of which, we can’t leave Lucia’s fine art in an empty house,” I said. “You’re the sculptor, Vivi. Why don’t you take the bronze?”
Vivi slanted me an ironic look, upside down. “Right,” she said. “A bronze Cellini satyr would look perfect on the dashboard of my van. Right next to the air freshener and the plastic Madonna.”
“But I thought you were winding down from your time on the crafts fair circuit,” I said. “Didn’t you say you wanted to try being in one place for a while?”
Vivi shrugged. “Sure, I’d like to. But there’s a big gap between saying it and doing it. I still have stock to sell, and I don’t have a place to land yet. It makes no sense to settle unless it’s in a place I can have a big studio, and that’s expensive. So no. Not quite yet.” My sister twisted, sinuous as a cat, and rolled over to face us, still lying on the ground. “I’m guessing that studio apartments in Alphabet City and Williamsburg aren’t much better than a Volkswagen van when it comes to museum-quality art exposition, huh?”
“They most certainly are not,” Nell said fervently. “I would never sleep again.”
I bit my lip as I chewed on the problem. “What do we do? Rent a safe-deposit box?”