Page 2 of The Butcher's Wife

I follow her from the bathroom, and my sister’s shape in the mirror trails behind.

The sticky-sweet scent of flowers suffocates me as we pass Serafina’s workbench. She’d been crafting an arrangement for Aunt Francesca’s birthday. It’s unfinished.

I don’t look at her bed, where the gossamer canopy drapes over the top like a shroud.

A deep laugh seeps up through the floorboards from downstairs, and my stomach twists.

“Sweetheart.” Mom looks back at me expectantly. That’s what she calls Serafina.

I look down at my feet, surprised that I’ve stopped.

“I don’t want to go.” My voice croaks. I’ve barely spoken a word in the past three days.

I was supposed to be done with all of this.

Mom’s brows pinch together. She’s usually more careful about letting that happen. Gives you wrinkles.

“It’s too late for that. Don’t keep him waiting.” She twists her hands together. “He’ll send Junior.”

I wait for fear to whisper in my ear, to curl around my muscles and bones like it does whenever Junior’s name is spoken, but my grief sinks me into a deep, dark well. Nothing can touch me here.

Mom sucks in a breath and rolls her shoulders back. “Don’t be difficult. It’s one dinner. You go, you sit, you look pretty. Do you want Dad getting in trouble?”

“No.”

“No, we don’t.” Mom looks lost for a moment. “We’d better go now.”

I jerk my legs forward like a clumsy marionette puppet. If I’m Serafina, then she would listen. She always obeyed.

Mom smiles wearily and loops her arm through mine.

As she tows me through the house, the bleached hallway runner bleeds into dark wood underneath my feet. She tugs me to a halt next to Dad’s worn loafers. I stop. The tops of my high heels shine like two black beetles against the marble flooring of my parents’ foyer.

“We were getting worried about you! Thought I’d have to send up the cavalry.”

It’s Aldo who speaks, but it’s his son Junior who I look at first.

Junior draws my attention the way an arm sticking out of a dumpster would. You want so badly to be wrong about what you’re witnessing, but the longer you stare and the closer you get, the more sharply horror claws into your throat, until eventually, you turn and walk away. You don’t engage with men like Junior. You avoid eye contact and pray he doesn’t notice you. At family events, if he looked at me or Serafina for more than a few seconds, it would plant a seed of terror in my heart that would grow for days after.

Today, though, I’m only mildly interested in the new eyepatch covering his left eye.

He grins at me, too much white circling his single eye and too many teeth flashing like a dog baring its fangs. When I don’t react, his brow crashes down in visible rage. Mom’s hand on my arm tightens.

Grief feels like a superpower in this moment. Juniorcould shove a gun into my mouth, and I wouldn’t blink an eye. He seethes as I turn to his dad—my future husband.

It has been a little over a year since I last saw Aldo, but he looks a decade older. His cobweb hair clings to his scalp, and his skin hangs loosely over his face like melted candlewax.

“Serafina,” he says.

I nearly gag. I don’t want to hear his voice croaking out my sister’s name with that pathetic imitation of compassion. If he had a single shred of honor or kindness, he wouldn’t be forcing my sister into a marriage in the first place.

But what I want doesn’t matter anymore.

The don needs a wife.

Mom releases me to Aldo, who gropes into the open air until I’m squeezed against his side. I accept his touch. Serafina didn’t deserve this, but I do. This is my penance.

Outside in the dying sunlight, I float by Aldo’s side along the length of the walkway where Serafina had once planted a river of billowy golden bushes. Did she tell me their names? I can’t remember.