Page 8 of Blind Devotion (Letters of Ruin #1)

Almost fourteen years ago

Mammina caressed my hand as I squeezed two of her fingers. I didn’t get it. Everybody was crying and sobbing. Even Mammina. Not big, fat crocodile tears, but enough to make me want to understand.

This wasn’t a sad movie. Babbo and she weren’t fighting. Renzo and I weren’t hurt. I looked around. No one else seemed to realize how weird this was.

The sky was gray and teary, nothing like back home, as we walked from the damp old church to the graveyard.

I looked at each headstone, Mammina’s hand tightening around mine.

My babbo always warned that we weren’t allowed to make crying scenes in public, no matter what.

This graveyard was public. Why hadn’t he said anything to these people?

I wanted to skip from one headstone to the next to look at the different years and names written on each and maybe steal a flower or two from the pots, but Mammina had already hissed at me that that wasn’t done.

I sighed, kicking at pebbles as we walked behind the eight men carrying a long box over their shoulders. We were all dressed in black.

I scratched at my collar while holding Gilly close and wondered if everyone’s clothes were just as itchy.

At least I had Gilly to distract me. I dug my face into the stuffed animal’s fur, avoiding the scratchy areas with rhinestones, as I watched the people walking around us.

I counted the crunch of gravel beneath our steps.

Seemed kind of silly to cry while walking.

I wasn’t going to, same for my big brother, Renzo, who just looked bored, but almost everyone else was.

Well, except for that boy just in front of me—maybe eleven or twelve years old—who kept staring up at that box as if the holders might drop it over his head before looking back down at the gravel and grass. Up, down, his eyes went, over and over.

Every once in a while, he looked over his shoulder, face scrunched up like a wrinkled shirt, jaw clenched like Babbo’s just before he was about to scream at me or Mammina.

A woman in an elegant silky dress—probably his mother since she looked the same age as my mammina—stood between him and an even older boy.

Unlike him, the teenager—I’m guessing his brother since he was like an older twin—clung to their mother.

I liked that he didn’t. Renzo always said the strong held themself up all on their lonesome.

I shook off Mammina’s hand and skipped right up beside the boy who was going to be my friend.

I stared up at his face. Yep, I was right.

No tears. His dark-blue eyes, like the night sky when the full moon was out, glared at me.

His lip peeled back in a snarl. He looked like a cartoon villain about to reveal an evil plot. I couldn’t help but giggle.

“Get ’way from me,” he said.

“You talk funny.” His English was weird. None of his vowels stuck. Instead his words tugged them out real far. Mammina had said it was because we were in France, and all French people spoke like that in English.

He didn’t answer, just sped up his footsteps and kept his eyes forward. I skipped up ahead of him, turned around, and walked backward.

“I’m faster than you.”

“You annoying girl.”

“We can speak Italian instead. Will that be easier?”

“ Non ,” he deadpanned, then proceeded to spit out some gibberish between his teeth. His face was long yet somehow round. His arms looked too long for his body as he threw them up in annoyance, like other people seemed to do around kids my age.

“Those weren’t words,” I informed him.

“ Qu’est-ce qu’elle est stupide .”

“That’s not how you say stupid.”

“It is French.”

“Ohhh.” I nodded. He was much older than me. He probably knew more languages too. “Okay, that makes sense. Will you teach me?”

“Go away. Allez, va-t-en .”

“But don’t you want to play?” I asked, twirling back around and sliding up beside him. I knocked him in the shoulder. “Everyone else is crying, and we’re walking and walking forever. And my babbo’s not yelling. We should play. I know you want to.”

“ Non , I do not.”

I pouted a bit. “’Cause I’m a girl? My brother says that a lot. But I swear I’m fun. I really, really promise.”

“You are just a kid.”

“So are you.”

He sighed. “You do not give up, do you?”

“Nope, never ever never.” I giggled. “So, we going to play?”

He shook his head.

“Why not? We can be friends. I promise to be the bestest friend you’ve ever had.”

“My grandmother would no’ like it.”

“Why not?” I frowned.

“ Respect. ”

“Respect?” I repeated with my American accent.

“ Oui. ” He nodded.

“Why?”

“For my grandfather.” His emphasis on the r ’s was so strange.

“Why? Where is he?” There were so many old people here I’d have a difficult time figuring out which old man his grandfather was, even if this boy pointed him out.

“In the… cerceuil .”

“The what?”

The boy pointed upward at the box carried on the men’s shoulders.

The woman beside him, pretty as a picture, as my schoolteacher loved to say, signaled for him to lower his finger quickly, without touching him.

She spouted off some quick, random sounds, probably more of that French, forced a smile in my direction, and then faced forward. There were even more tears in her eyes.

“Huh,” I huffed out. “Why is he in there? That can’t be comfy.”

For the first time, he really looked at me. It might have been nicer if he didn’t look so confused or upset or irritated, whatever that look was.

“He is dead.”

“Oh,” I said and frowned. I peered around me at all the sad, teary faces. The black clothing. The walk from the church. The cemetery headstones around us. “ Oh .”

“Yes, oh.”

“Don’t roll your eyes at me. I’ve never been to a funeral before.” Why was he looking at me like that? “I’m not strange.”

“Your parents…they are of the life, no?”

“The life?”

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “that makes many sense.”

“What does? Oh, come on. Tell me. Please, please, please, pleeeease.” He still didn’t answer me. “Well, you’re no fun.”

He sighed. “It is a funeral. He is dead. It is not supposed to be fun.”

I gazed up at the box. No, not a box, a casket.

This funeral was probably exactly why Mammina and Babbo had argued this morning about leaving me behind at the vacation house with the nanny.

For once, I was glad Babbo won the argument.

And he won without hurting Mammina or making her cry.

That was one of the best parts. The second was that even with the sad people and all, I was so happy to be here.

I’d made a new friend. My first friend in the last two weeks since our plane landed, which was for-e-ver ago.

“Will you miss him?”

“Who?”

I pointed at the box and ignored the glare from the boy’s mother. She didn’t look like much fun with that serious stare, no matter how pretty she was.

“Your grandfather, silly,” I whispered behind the back of my hand.

“ Oui. ” He nodded. Did that sound mean yes, then? “ Absolument. ”

I needed to learn French, I decided. That way, he and I could talk in our own secret language, and almost no one would understand us.

“I miss my dolls back home. Do you miss him like that?”

He barked out a laugh, then schooled his face quickly, though his lips seemed to twitch here and there. He reminded me of my brother Renzo, who never tried to show more emotion than he had to. Well, except with me. I could make Renzo laugh even on his worst days.

His older brother, probably about Renzo’s age, peeked around their mother and glared at me.

There was something in his eyes that sent a chill down my spine.

Ghosts looked friendlier, especially with those scars around his mouth.

My new friend had a scar too, big and long, around his right eye and down to his chin, but it didn’t make him look mean.

I don’t know why, but his older brother just looked half-dead inside and angry about it.

I ducked my head and avoided his gaze. At least my new friend had kind eyes. Sad but kind.

“Here.” I tugged my friend’s arm to stop his walking.

Ignoring his mother’s gasp, I handed Gilly over to him, my most prized and beloved friend. He seemed like he needed Gilly more than I did. “You can have her. Maybe she’ll make you feel better.”

My new friend’s eyes weren’t on Gilly, though, but on my hand.

His mother had stopped walking, her hands covering her mouth, eyes oddly wide, with fat tears gliding down her smooth cheeks.

Those walking with the box had stopped too and even angled around to look back at us.

Well, now I just felt all jittery and awkward.

So many people were watching us as if I’d done something wrong.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to the boy a little frantically.

Mammina hurried up from the rear of the line of walkers, dragging Renzo with her.

Her repeated, soft “ scusi ” were like a beacon.

It didn’t matter that we lived in San Francisco; Mammina never gave up on speaking Italian as much as possible, even if other people didn’t understand.

Babbo strutted calmly behind them, his green eyes much like mine, squinted into flat lines.

That couldn’t be good. I trembled, hoping I was wrong.

“I just wanted to give you Gilly.”

“You are touching me,” my new friend said, looking at me and my hand as if it were one of those horribly complicated five-hundred-piece puzzles my nanny was always trying to get me to do.

It was then that Mammina swept between us and pulled me behind her black dress with a swish of fabric across my face. Gilly dropped to the wet gravel. I tried to reach for her, but Mammina wouldn’t let me go.

“I am so terribly sorry, Signora De Villier. My daughter can be overzealous at times.” Whatever overzealous meant, it didn’t sound very good when my mother used the same tone she used when trying to calm my father when he was upset.

I tried to peek around her to look at my friend, to see if he still looked so confused and sad, but she kept shoving me back.

“You’re in trouble now,” Renzo singsonged beside me. The big oaf. I stuck my tongue out at him, rewarded with plops of rainwater. How many could I catch?

My new friend snorted, and I couldn’t help but laugh, especially with how surprised he appeared that such a sound had come out of his mouth. That seemed to relax Mammina a little because she stopped pushing me behind her, and I finally got through.

“Here,” the boy said, handing a wet and dirty Gilly to me.

I petted her drenched fur down. My fingers grazed over the rhinestones I had tirelessly glued around Gilly’s eyebrows and head after trimming the fur so that she looked like a cross between the capybara she once was and a bone-headed dinosaur.

There, she looked better now, not a patch of fur out of place.

“I want you to have her. She’s been my bestest friend forever and ever and always helped me feel better when I was sad. I think she could help you too. I want her to help you, but you have to promise to take care of her. Do you promise?”

“Persetta,” Mammina whispered urgently. Babbo laid his heavy hand on my shoulder.

“ Non , non, this is no problem.” The boy’s mother’s accent was even stronger than his, but it was kind and gentle. “Your daughter is a lovely girl. You must be very proud.” The lady knelt in front of me. “Persetta, pretty name for a pretty girl. Adrien, take her gift.”

And he did.

“I promise,” he said.

When I took his hand and wiggled my fingers around his, he froze again, riveted to our locked hands.

I ignored Babbo’s voice in the background, something about signing a contract between families.

Babbo was always talking about contracts and business, whatever all that meant.

It didn’t matter. Because I had a new friend, and I had a feeling it was going to be a very good friendship.

“It’s only my hand, silly. I don’t bite.” I swung our hands about and tugged him forward after the casket, since the holders had started walking ahead.

“You are strange.”

I shrugged. “So are you. But I like you anyway.”

He didn’t say anything, but a flash of lightning lit up the hope in his really pretty blue eyes.