Page 119 of Disgrace

“What?”

Giulia picked at her nails, avoiding everyone’s gaze and looking all kinds of awkward for the moment. It wasn’t very often the girls talked about their mother. They buried all their feelings, and memories of their mother somewhere deep, and kept them locked up tight where no one could reach. Siena didn’t think that was very healthy to do, honestly. Someday, they were going to have to deal with the murder of their mother, and the things that preceded it.

Right now, though, they couldn’t do any of that. It wasn’t a topic that Kev or Darren had wanted them to chat about, really. It might upset Coraline, after all.

Not that Siena’s mother made very much of an effort to be around the girls. Because she absolutely didn’t if she could help it.

“I guess,” Greta continued after a long stretch of silence, “I wish I had listened now. Been better that day—on a lot of other days, too.”

Without even thinking about it, Siena pulled her hands away from the bread, and reached out to her half-sister. She touched the girl’s cheek with a dough- and flour-covered hand to give Greta a gentle pat. It left fingerprints of flour behind, but Greta didn’t seem to mind.

“Your ma loved you, Greta. Regardless if you were terrible, or wonderful. She’s your ma, so you know what that means, right?”

“What?”

“That she loved you just as much on your best days as she did on your worst days. That’s what good mothers do. And I know you have a whole bunch of good memories to think about, but sometimes the bad ones slip through, too, right?”

Greta shrugged. “It makes me feel guilty sometimes.”

“Don’t. Okay? Just don’t. Focus on all the good because you are going to have more than enough bad moments in your life to focus on at a later date. Right now, just focus on all the good you remember.”

Her sister nodded. “Okay.”

“Back to bread?”

Both girls agreed.

Siena made quick work of breaking the dough into three chunks. She passed a piece to Greta and Giulia before pushing the bowl of flour over, too.

“Put a little on your hands, but not too much,” she said. “Keeps it from sticking. We’ll knead it a bit more, and then put them in bowls to rise for thirty minutes to an hour.”

“Okay,” the girls echoed.

Siena continued chatting with her half-sisters while they worked just to keep them occupied in a verbal way. At least then, she hoped their attention would not go back to darker places in their thoughts.

Or … that was her hope.

In the background of their work, the television played through breaking news on the major news network Siena liked to keep on daily. The news was always depressing, but in some ways, it also reminded her that her life could be a hell of a lot worse in ways.

Unfortunately, she also kept it on for another reason. Her family—and John’s, at times—seemed to be the focus of New York related news a lot lately. Organized crime was making a comeback; not that it ever went away, the idiots. The streets were bloodier than ever between the crime families, and rivaled the Chicago War from two decades earlier.

Attention was never good in their life.

It hindered business.

Siena slowed in her work as a shot of a street came into view on the television.

“Some sort of explosive device was detonated on …”

Siena blinked at the reporter’s words. Not because of what the woman said, but because of what she saw on the television. She recognized the street they were showing—a Brooklyn street full of small businesses. Mostly restaurants, but a few other vendors, too.

And then the shot changed to a building. Windows blown out, and a door ripped off the hinges. The front charred from fire, and smoke still billowing out from the broken, gaping holes of the business.

Explosive device.

“A restaurant that was undergoing renovations and owned by—”

“Darren,” Siena said quietly.