Fate Interrupted

31. Family Matters

"What happened?"

"My mom said my dad always got big ideas. He had some kind of new big plan. He'd yell at me a lot. I remember him quitting his job. We lost a bunch of money, I guess. I remember my mom and him fighting all the time.  He fucked off back to Europe, and we had to move. My mom said she'd get it all back. We'd move out of Bayfield, but... that didn't work out, obviously."

He heaves a long sigh. "I don't know. Part of me wants to see him, but another part of me, I don't know... I think I'd probably punch his lights out—for my mom. When I was little, I wanted him back so bad, but when I was, like, twelve, I wished he'd wind up in jail... or dead," he mutters quietly. 

Again, he sighs. "I need to talk to my sister. Text her and ask if we can stop by." He digs his phone out of his pocket and throws it into my lap. I find her in his contacts, and Gio dictates a brief and vague message to her. She replies in the affirmative as we pull up to Hwy. 101, and he makes a right.

His younger sister Chiara or Kiki, as he used to call her, lives with her husband in a house in Mill Valley just north of San Francisco. On the way over, Gio tells me her husband, Dan, works for a big fancy tech company, and Chiara's a stay-at-home mom and still doing acting and modeling on the side.

After about forty minutes, we pull up to an unremarkable, single-story gray box of a house—one of three designs in their cookie-cutter neighborhood, a mirror image of the darker gray house next door.

My stomach is as tight and heavy as a cannonball, and I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans as we exit the car. I haven't seen his sister since the end of summer after high school when she had given me a death stare, and the mental image packs my belly with more fear. What if she still hates my guts? 

Gio doesn't seem worried, though. He strides up to the house and rings the doorbell. There is a long stretch of silence before I hear someone at the door. As it slowly opens, I'm practically cowering behind Gio, bracing myself for the inevitable eye-stabbing I'm about to receive. But to my surprise, it's not Chiara who's standing there.

"Uncle Gio!!" a little boy's voice cries, and a small body runs straight ahead, practically bowling into his hips for a hug.

"Tony! Hey." Gio bends down to the blond little boy, who looks about to be about five or six and gives him a big hug. "How are you, Buddy?" But the boy doesn't reply. He pushes Gio away and immediately turns back into the house, screaming, "Uncle Gio's here!" 

That's when I see her, a grown-up Chiara gliding toward me to answer the door. Her light brown hair waves effortlessly around her face, which is more angular now, setting off her high cheekbones and those perfect eyebrows like Gio's. 

Crap. She's even more gorgeous than she was in high school! She must be twenty-six now or something. No wonder she's still a model—just look at her. Her body is absolutely phenomenal, and she's a mom too. Man, this family has good genes.

"Hi, Gio," she says, giving him a quick hug. "Hi, Ren," she smiles at me, and I see a bit of a twinkle in her eye. 

What's that about?

But before I can overthink it anymore, she sweeps past Gio and gives me a big, warm sisterly hug. At first, it shocks me, but then I melt into it, and it puts me right at ease. Relief sweeps over me. "Come in," she says.

Her house on the inside is pretty similar to the outside, gray, gray, and gray. She even had gray leather sofas, but the floor and the tables are scattered with so many brightly colored toys it kinda livens up the place.

"Sorry about the mess," she says, noticing my eyes roving around. Why don't you two go in the living room, and I'll get you something to drink? Do you want water? Green tea?"