On the twenty-third of March, at a time he should’ve been in school, Luca Orsini sees the face of his sister for the last time.

He’s numb walking up to the casket to pay his respects, a deep hollowness taking over him the closer he gets to the sight of her pale face. She looks tiny, and fragile—and too still to be just asleep.

Tongue feeling thick in his mouth, Luca tries not to linger on the worst of his thoughts, on her motionless form and blank expression, on the eeriness of her laying in the velvet-lined coffin.

He grimaces instead at the makeup they’d put on her.

Ciana hates the color red—had hated—but the blush on her cheeks is bright and her lips are coated in a vibrant cherry shade. He wonders who made that choice, and why they couldn't have picked a nicer color. One that didn’t stand out like garrish paint on her gaunt complexion.

Ciana, who had always looked tired, wasting away to skin and bones in the last stages of her battle with cancer, is even paler now that she is dead, and no amount of lipstick and blush will change that.

Luca looks away—he’s sick with the fact that this is his final memory of her.

Fingernails dig into his knuckles, reminding him of who is holding onto him so tightly, he glances down and winces. Rico clings to him, face pressed against his hip, probably getting his clothes wet with tears.

“Is it scary?” Luca asks quietly, almost absentmindedly.

Because the word feels all too right.

Rico nods, the movement jerky and a bit like he’s using the opportunity to wipe his snot on him.

And what, just what can he possibly say to that?

Luca sighs, clapping his brother on the back, and gestures for them to move. “Let’s go, others will want to pay their respects, too.”

Rico nods again and, while weighing Luca down and adding a limp to his gait, follows Luca’s steps towards their waiting father, who stands facing away from the crowd, shaking shoulders curled inwards.

Unable to maintain any semblance of a face, not even for the sake that they’re in public, Giuseppino quietly weeps into his hands. The sight of his sister in the casket has done something terrible to his father.

The cramps in Luca's stomach tighten and he has to swallow his nausea. Ciana's dead face keeps flashing with every blink and it worsens when he uses his free hand to rub his eyes. Seeing his father cry only makes it worse. And to that, Luca feels helpless.

His eyes are painfully dry now, looking at his brother and father.

“Really, Babbo? At least grab a tissue,” Luca chides, expression carefully blank. “You’ll get caccole on your suit, I swear.”

Pino drags in a deep breath. “Fazzoletto, per favore?”

Luca sighs, digging into the breast of his suit pocket to pull out his white, blue-lined handkerchief, handing it to his father and curling his lip as the perfectly good linen is quickly covered in snot.

God, funerals are such messes. Not least in part to the people in attendance.

“They’ll be moving her soon, won’t they?” Pino asks, looking up from the soggy handkerchief, eyes red-rimmed and nose puffy, as if it has been enlarged two sizes. He looks a decade older, aged by grief, his usually dark brown hair peppered with white, and his five o’clock shadow transformed into a scraggly, unkempt beard.

No longer is he the rakishly handsome man that Luca has grown tired of hearing about from uninteresting people. Tonight he’s going to be ubriaco fradicio—just like he’s been for the past week—and Luca is banking on him being too shit-faced later on to notice all the women sending the mourning single father those types of looks. No way is any of that a good idea.

His father has never had the best luck with women, after all.

“Where’re they moving her?” Rico asks, tentatively bringing his head up from Luca’s hip.

“Al cimitero,” Luca says.

“Cemetery?” Rico swallows, his already pale complexion growing paler.

“She’ll be buried beside her mamma,” Pino explains, and then has to take a deep, shuddering breath of air. “Lei avrebbe amato—”

“Babbo,” Luca interjects before his father can go into an unnecessary tangent.

Pino glances towards Luca, his eyes narrowing. Luca’s shoulders tense, scowl deepening, and then—

“Mio bambino!” the gushing voice of Luca’s grandmother rings out, cutting through the heavy atmosphere. Pino’s expression instantly lightens, and he pushes past his sons to get to the elderly woman tunneling through the crowd to get to them.

“Così felice che tu sia potuto venire!” Pino cries, opening up his arms to embrace his tiny seventy-two year old five-foot tall mother.

The mother and son duo exchange rapid-fire Italian, too quick for Luca to pick up everything given his too American upbringing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But having been raised by an immigrant who’s third language had been English, Luca can at least pick out a few words and phrases to get the gist of what they’re saying.

She was heartbroken to hear the news, booking the ticket from Italy as fast as she could and was afraid she’d be late after an awful experience in the air. She was surprised she’d made it in time for the vigil. That story is quickly followed by assurances that Ciana is with God now, and that He’ll be taking good care of her up in Heaven, which Pino agrees is a great relief given how much pain she had been in.

“I wish I could speak Italian like you and Babbo,” Rico mutters, looking on at the scene helplessly. It’s an ever present complaint of his that Luca can only wistfully sigh at now.

“Better practice then—niente nella vita è facile,” Luca reminds him, his lips almost pulling up into a smirk.

“Something about life...” Rico murmurs thoughtfully to himself before looking up for help. “But I don’t know what else.”

“It’s never easy,” Luca translates, and spies from the corner of his eye that Pino and Sofia are finishing up as they turn towards him and his brother.

Sofia steps forward, the dangling necklaces on her chest swaying as she comes closer, arms outstretched.

“How has my boys been? Luciano been taking care of you, Enrico? You been taking care of him?” Sofia asks in accented English. Given she’s spent ten years in America, she isn’t nearly as bad as most of Luca’s cousins and uncles, who notoriously pretend to know English and are really just bullshitting the entire time.

“Did you have a nice trip?” Rico asks evasively, trying for a smile that fades in seconds.

“It was hard on me,” Sofia says with a pout, placing her hands over her heart. “There were so many delays, and a rude man kept poking me in my side with his, mmm—non conosco la parola—his gomito—”

Rico blinks. “His what?”

“Elbow,” Luca supplies.

“Sì! His elbow.” Sofia gives a grand, self-pitying sigh, and lays her eyes on Luca’s. “Does your nonna not deserve a big hug for her troubles?”

Luca loves his grandmother, that’s for sure—she’s the only one in his extended family who remembers to get him something for his birthday every year—but Luca also loathes hugs with a fervor that is not often outmatched by anything. 

Although... 

Luca glances down at the grip Rico has around his waist and has to acknowledge that, if he’s made exceptions for his little brother, he should make exceptions for his nonna, too.

He opens his arms up, watching her eyes light up, hearing the crack of Pino’s laugh in the background, and feels her thin, but warm arms embrace him. He awkwardly wraps his much bulkier arms around her and gives her shoulders a careful pat. Rico, caught in the middle, can’t seem to help his giggles.

“I have missed you both,” she whispers, a tremor in her voice. “All three of you, I have missed you.”

Luca swallows but he can’t seem to dislodge whatever has just gotten stuck in his throat. Rather, his eyes feel so painfully, painfully dry and for a moment, he has to let himself close them. Just for a moment.

“Mie nipoti, mie bellissimi nipoti,” she whispers in an almost musical tone, rubbing circles into Luca’s back with one hand and leaning down to kiss Rico on the head. When she finally pulls away, tears pool in her eyes. “You boys are good boys.”

“Ti amo, Nonna.”

She reaches up to squeeze his cheek. “Ti amo, Luciano.” 

With a sniffle and breaths that edge on being sobs, she reaches into the purse dangling from her side and proffers travel-size packages of kleenex, handing both Rico and him one before taking one out for herself. She slips out a tissue to dab at her eyes and Luca awkwardly clutches his in his hand, having no use for it.

“They’ll be moving her soon,” Pino reminds them, reaching over to muse Rico’s hair before cupping him by the ear, face distraught.

Rico, thankfully, takes that as permission to latch onto their father instead, to which Luca is grateful for as soon as he feels the wet stains on his jacket. He wants no more of that. 

“Quale cimitero?” Sofia asks.

“St. Mary’s. It’s about a ten-twenty minute drive,” Pino answers distractedly, his voice a gruff rasp, pulling out his phone to take a look at an email. “Come with us, Mamma, so you don’t get lost.”

“Va bene,” she agrees readily.

Luca sighs. That means he’ll have to sit in the backseat with Rico where his little brother will assuredly return to clinging to him. More snot, yay.

Except, Pino looks up towards Luca. “Will you drive, cucciolo? I have some business to take care of.”

Luca shouldn’t be as surprised as he is. 

Pino, otherwise known as Giuseppino Orsini to his clients, is an IP attorney so successful, he can be seen working at all hours in the day, no matter the day, from breakfast at dawn, all the way until dusk, at night. Today is no different, apparently.

“Yeah, I’ll drive,” Luca says, masking his eagerness to, a bit weary at the thought of his father driving.

“Topolino and me will be in the back then,” Pino says, patting Rico on the head, a smile cracking itself on his face which can barely be seen through the beard. “Or should I be calling you polpo now?”

“What’s that?”

“Octopus,” Luca answers, his lips twitching into a smile at the shoddy joke.

Rico wrinkles his nose. “Nooo, don’t call me that.”

Pino chuckles, but the sound cuts off, his expression crumbling as movement catches his gaze, eyes filling with new tears as he shakily says, “Sbrigati—out to the car, boys. Looks like they’ll be moving her now.”

In seconds, whatever control his father had managed to regain is lost as he chokes a sob out.

Nonna quickly embraces her weeping son, leading him away with hushed assurances that fill Luca with dread.

He glances back at the casket, watches men from the church close it, and sees just a fraction of Ciana’s face again before the dark mahogany wood covers her completely. 

His stomach lurches at the sight and for a moment, he’s un-buoyed in the world, weightless. There’s nothing anymore that matters, a hollowness settling over him, submerging him in deep waters but inversely, sending him freefalling from the skies.

“Luca?”

He startles, blinking.

“Luca?” Rico calls again, nudging his arm.

He sighs and looks at his brother.

He's never seen him look so scared. Simply unable to follow Luca's gaze and look in the direction of her casket. His voice shakes as he whispers, “Hey, let’s go already.”

Absentmindedly, Luca nods and in a reversal of roles, feels himself being guided out of the church by his little brother, whose cold hands are slick with sweat and tears. 

And Luca finds himself holding onto them for dear life.