Footsteps leaving.
More silence.
I wait. I count to three hundred. My tongue throbs where I bit it. The blood tastes like the coins Papa keeps in a jar on his dresser, the ones he lets me sort by year on Sunday afternoons.
I push the coats away. Crawl out of the closet. Stand in my bedroom with my twisted nightgown and my bare feet and open the door.
The hallway light is on. It is the light Mamma leaves on for me when I wake up from nightmares and walk to their bedroom. The warm one. The safe one.
The hallway floor is red.
Not all of it. A trail. Starting at the foyer and going toward the living room. Red on white marble. The marble Mamma chose when they renovated. She showed me the samples and asked my opinion. I picked the white one because it looked like a castle floor. Like something from the stories she read to me before bed.
I walk toward the living room. My feet are in the red. It is warm. I can feel it between my toes. Warm and thick. I know what it is, but my ten-year-old brain will not say the word.
Papa is face down by the sofa. His left arm is extended toward the hallway. Toward my room. He was reaching for me. Even at the end, he was reaching for me.
Mamma is on her back near the window. Her eyes are open. Her jasmine perfume mixes with something sharp and chemical that burns my nose. Gunpowder. I know the smellfrom the fireworks Papa takes me to see over the Bay of Naples every New Year's Eve.
The apartment smells like fireworks, jasmine, and copper. I stand in the doorway and look at my parents. My knees give out.
I sit on the marble floor in their blood. It soaks through my nightgown.
I open my mouth and nothing comes out. The sound is stuck somewhere between my lungs and my throat, and it will not move. I sit there with my mouth open in a silent scream, looking at my mother's open eyes.
I don't know how long.
Then I hear a key in the front door, but I don't move. If they've come back to kill me, fine. Fine. Let them. The picture frame is broken in the foyer and Mamma's wedding portrait is facedown in the glass. I don't care anymore.
The door opens.
"Dio mio. Dio mio, no."
(My God. My God, no.)
Father Domenico.
He comes around the corner, sees my parents, and his knees buckle the same way mine did. He grabs the doorframe. His face goes white. His mouth moves. The sounds that come out are those of a man whose world is ending.
"Fratello mio."(My brother.)
He’s crying. His hands are shaking. He looks at Papa's body and then at Mamma's. Then he turns to me.
Sitting on the floor. Small. Covered in their blood.
He crosses the room and takes off his coat, the black one he wears to Mass, and he wraps it around me. His hands are gentle as he lifts me up like I weigh nothing. My arms hang at my sides as my nightgown drips on the marble.
"Vieni con me, cucciola. Ti tengo al sicuro."
(Come with me, little one. I'll keep you safe.)
I look at his face. Tears on his cheeks. Red eyes. He is holding me the way Papa held me when I fell last winter. Like I’m the only thing in his world.
He carries me toward the door. Over his shoulder, I see the living room one last time.
Papa's arm is reaching for me. Mamma's eyes open.
I close my eyes, praying that I can wake up from this nightmare.