Page 11 of Broken Trust

Across the lawn, Mamma catches my eye and holds it. She does the small tight thing with her mouth that's meant behave yourself, the same one she's used on me since I was a child. Her gaze flicks to the glass in my hand and back up to my face. Put it down. Fix your face. Be a good wife. I lift the flask instead and drink slowly, watching her, and I see her decide to let it go for now, because there are people watching and Mamma doesn't correct her daughter where the guests can hear.

And the ladies are in heaven, all of them, the aunts and the cousins and the women from the stores, swarming around Mia in her blush dress with her hand resting on the top of that perfect round belly, laughing, touching her, telling her she's glowing, telling her she's never looked more beautiful.

Mia's in the middle with the light on her and everyone leaning in, and me at the edge in the dress that makes me look like a bad copy of her, drinking. I used to bring home good grades, and she had all the attention with her looks and charm.

“Gia.” Mia's voice, bright, sailing over everyone's heads. “Gia, come, you have to help me open them, come.”

She's reaching for me, hand held out across the crowd, pulling me in front of everybody toward the table piled with blush-wrapped gifts, and the aunts make a warm little sound and part to let me through, because isn't that lovely, the sisters, the two of them, and I go because my legs carry me before my mind can refuse, and I end up beside her at the table with a hundred faces turned toward us, waiting to watch us be happy together.

“Ugh, have you been drinking? I can smell it on you,” she snaps. “Mamma!” She screeches, and as if on automatic dial, Mamma is by my side.

“You're ruining your sister's day.”

Really? Is this my sister's day? I thought it was mine.

“Mamma, just leave Gia alone,” Nella says in my defense, but the flask is open and the whiskey pours down my front. I burst out laughing, and Nella does the same.

“You will not embarrass me. Go freshen up and come back.”

Nella and I can't stop laughing, until Carmela is by our side. She raised us, the one Mamma treats as if she's her servant, but who was more of a mother to us than Mamma could ever be.

“Girls, you know this isn't the way to behave.”

We both nod our heads like the obedient girls she brought us up to be. Carmela is more than a maid. She's the one I went to when the girls bullied me back at school and cut off my hair after they invited me to a sleepover. She's the second person I told after Nella when Dante asked me to marry him, and she was the first person to know when I found out that I'm infertile. Her dark eyes soften as she strokes my hair.

“Let's see if Mamma has something you can wear,” she says, and smiles to comfort me.

“Mamma can't even fit into Mamma's clothes,” Nella says. Carmela tries to scold us, but as we walk to the entrance of the house, even she ends up laughing too.

The only thing I could find was my old sweatpants from when I was a teen. Luckily, I always wore big clothes to hide my figure, so they fit. I take off my makeup, then head back downstairs. Nella passed out on her bed while I changed.

The baby shower is going ahead in full swing. I realize more and more that this thing that's happening has nothing to do with me needing to be a good wife, but is all for them to let me know I'm no longer needed.

Mia picks up a box, then smiles for the photographer. And then, small and quick, thinking nobody's looking because everybody's looking at her belly and not her face, she lifts her eyes, finds Dante across the garden, and winks at him.

That’s it. One wink. I can't take it anymore.

I storm into the middle of the garden. “Stop it. Stop, all of you, stop looking at her like she's a saint.”

The garden goes quiet in a spreading ring, the way a stone silences water.

“Cara.” Mamma's already moving toward me, smile fixed on, voice sweet and deadly. “Gia, you've had too much. Come and sit down.”

“My husband’s fucking my twin sister. Our baby was supposed to be by surrogacy, but what Mia wants, Mia gets.”

The sound goes through the crowd, the little gasps, the cousin nearest me stepping back. Mamma's face is disgusted.

“You see what she is. You were always a disgrace, Gia. Always. Ruining your sister's day, drunk, in front of everyone. This is who you are,” Mamma says.

Dante's coming across the lawn fast now, hands already out in front of him. “Gia. Gia, please, let me explain, it's not, just let me,” and he can't finish it either, none of us can ever finish our sentences in this family, and I watch him come at me with his handsome guilty face and his explaining hands and I feel nothing but very, very tired.

“You can’t even tell us apart. You call her name in our bed.”

He shakes his head denying it, it’s even worse than I thought…he didn’t even realize he’d done it.

Mia sets the gift down on the table, calm, rests both hands on the top of her belly, looks at me out of our own shared eyes, and says it like it's the most reasonable thing in the world.

“You wanted a baby, Gia. I'm giving you one. I don't see the problem.”