Sons of Thunder (20 page)

The ones he’d stumbled up last night? She didn’t form the word, but he heard it.
Pushed.
Some fanatical jerk had pushed her down the stairs. The feelings that swept through him couldn’t be called brotherly concern. No wonder Markos went berserk when she started singing for Uncle Jimmy.

“I want to know who this man is.”

She gripped his wrist, pulled his hand away. Shook her head. “It’s not your problem.”

“Not my…it
is
my problem! I made Markos a promise—”

She shot him a look that, if he wasn’t already bruised and beaten, might have leveled him on the spot. “I’m not your responsibility, Dino. I’m not your sister, or Markos’s wife, or even a distant cousin that you have to watch over. In fact, trust me, you should probably stay far, far away from me.”

“Are you kidding me? A distant cousin? Yes, fine, so you’re not my sister, or even related to me. You’re
Sofia
.”

“I’m nobody.”

She spoke without rancor, without heat. Still, the word could take him to his knees.

He’d be very proud of you
. Oh yes. He wanted to put his fist through the wall. “I’m walking you home from now on. Every night.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous is me letting you stay at the train station, waiting for Markos to show up. Jimmy probably gunned him down, or worse, drowned him at the bottom of Lake Michigan.”

Oh. His words flashed in her eyes, and he longed to grab them back, at least their tone. “I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t say that.” She held up her hand, as if pushing his words away. “It’s not true!”

“It—is. Sofia…”

She backed away from him, her hands up. “I am not listening to this—”

“I don’t want it to be true! Oh, Sofia you have no idea how much I’d like to see him walk through that door.”

Except. Even as he said it, his chest tightened, and bile backed up his throat.

No. He didn’t. He didn’t want Markos back. Not the Markos that stripped him of the man he wanted to be.

“I keep thinking that he got away, built a life somewhere. Maybe on the sea. I used to love to watch him sail on his boat, the wind slicking back his hair, the sun in his skin.” She covered her mouth with her hand. Shook her head. “I should have sung for him.”

Oh.

See, he hadn’t been dreaming Sofia’s love for his brother. He softened his voice. “He’s gone, Sofia. Or he would have found us. He would have come back—at least for you.”

She gave him a terrible look, one that made him want to weep. But he stared back, unblinking. “You need to face the truth.”

Her jaw tightened, more control than fury. “I have. The day I showed up on the Scarpellis’ doorstep and saw you in their dining room, bellying up to the table, hair slicked back, in clothes I didn’t
recognize, I realized that I didn’t want to poison your life. Then… or now.”

She turned her back to him. “I think you should leave, Dino.”

“No. I’m not leaving until I find out who this guy is who’s harassing you.”

Stalking back to him, she picked up his plate. “Are you going to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Fine.” She tossed it into the sink. Swept up a towel and covered her eyes. Her shoulders shook and for a second, yes—he wanted to leave.

Flee to the boardinghouse. Sit by the Christmas tree and wait for a telegram from Lizzy. Clutch to his chest the fragments of his planned-out life.

Maybe he, too, had to face the truth.

Lizzy wasn’t coming back. And that life he’d longed for had died with her.

But maybe…and it wasn’t like he really believed in fate, or divine providence, but running into Sofia seemed like…a second chance to keep his promise to Markos. Maybe he
could
make him proud.

His voice gentled. “I should have stayed with you at the train station. I was so busy wanting to run from Chicago, I didn’t look back.” He touched her hair, surprised at how soft it was. “I’m not running now.”

She sighed, and in her eyes, he saw a sadness that swept him back to the day they left Zante. He’d sat on the bench, knees drawn up, believing that if he could just wake up from the nightmare, he’d find himself in his own bed overlooking the sea. Or maybe in the bow of Markos’s fishing boat, watching it part the foamy waters. But occasionally he’d emerge from himself and his gaze would land on Markos, caught in his own tragedy. And then Sofia.

As they’d drawn away from shore, she seemed—slapped.

Even, confused.

“You’re scaring me a little.” She touched his eye. “You—you remind me of Markos. He wouldn’t listen to reason, he always thought he had to solve everything, even when he was in over his head. And—I can’t live through that again.” She flinched, and he was there with her, in the basement of Uncle Jimmy’s restaurant, their voices scraped raw pleading for Markos’s life. Dino had to run upstairs twice to retch into the snow before he emptied enough to feel rage instead of fear.

He’d forgotten the rage. Until now. Then, it had solidified into courage. Now, it could turn him numb, help him move past grief.

Move into a new life. He wove his fingers into Sofia’s soft hair. “You won’t have to. It’s time I really did make my brother proud.”

He met her eyes then and touched his forehead to hers. “I’ve missed you, Sofia.”

And, for the first time since she’d picked him off the sidewalk, she smiled.

Yes, no wonder his brother had loved her.

“You here again, stranger?” Sofia came out the back door of the theater, a streetlamp flooding down the alley to catch her weary smile. A dusting of January snow—crisp and bright—turned the sky above orange.

“We keep meeting,” Dino said, then blew on his hands before reaching out to button her coat at the neck. How Dino hated the way it frayed at the collar, at the cuffs. She looked like a waif in it, not at all the elegant woman she’d become, her strong, capable hands that occasionally made
him dinner, even at midnight, the hesitant, hard-earned smile that could stir him to life, even after a twenty-four-hour shift. He longed for the hour to tick to ten, for those moments when he’d wait in the alleyway, his hands tucked into the pockets of his leather coat, collar up, waiting for her to exit the theater. Sure, she only lived two blocks away. Fifteen minutes, if he dragged—and very often he did, devouring her words, her smile, the way she looked at him and saw both the boy he’d been and the man he’d become.

Or, the man he hoped to become.

He held out his elbow for her, and she wrapped her gloved hand through it.

“Someone is going to start talking.” The words slipped out before he could stop them, yet he didn’t yank them back, didn’t soften them with a harsh chuckle. His old life, the one with Lizzy, had died that dusky morning when the Japs had decided to declare war on his country.

Or, well, not
his
country. Because if he joined up, they’d discover too quickly that he didn’t belong here at all.

Sofia held a bouquet of carnations in her hand, and as they walked by a singed barrel, she dumped them inside.

He glanced at them. “From him?”

“He knows you’re waiting here. He told me to get rid of my bodyguard.”

Dino had made a point of arriving early, pacing under the lights of the theater, then in the alleyway, staking his territory.

Not unlike a dog, he supposed. Still, if it kept Sofia safe.

And on his arm…

They walked through the snow, her feet crunching lightly, even in her heels. The air nipped at his ears, his fedora poor insulation. She had
turned her collar up, and her hat—a worn cloche probably from her days in Chicago—would hardly be warm.

He cupped his hand over hers. “Sometimes I think I can’t get any colder, and then the wind will come in off the Mississippi and I’ll feel my bones creak. Why couldn’t the Scarpellis have moved to Florida?”

She laughed. “When we first came here, I shared a room with the other women at the Gold Medal Flour factory—”

“I didn’t know you worked there.”

“Oh, I worked anywhere I could. And I’d curl up in my boarding room, pull my feet under me, and dream of the hot Zante sand. Sometimes I could even smell it. That, and roast lamb, with mint. Your mother was an amazing cook.”

He let his mother walk into his mind, felt her strong hands around him as she settled him on her lap, heard her low tones in his ear as she read aloud. She always smelled of the kitchen—onions and fried fish, dill and mint, and the sweet tang of orange juice. He’d never smelled the like of it since coming to America.

Except around Sofia. Maybe it was the coriander, the cinnamon, the way she kneaded love into her bread.

He might have put on a few pounds over the past three weeks.

“You mentioned you had a roommate—”

She glanced at him.

“The night at…” He lifted a shoulder. “At Lizzy’s house. Thanksgiving. She got you the job there?”

“Helen. We roomed together at the factory until she started working for the Spensers. When they, uh…passed, she got a live-in position with a family in St. Paul.”

They turned out into the street, walked under the puddle of streetlights, past O’Donnell’s, the place where she’d picked him up,
restarted his life. Tonight he recognized the sounds of Glenn Miller. He hadn’t even asked her if she knew how to dance.

Because that, too, felt like a part of his old life.

“Do you ever think of going back to Greece?” She slipped and clamped her other hand on his arm. He caught her, righted her.

“Do you ever think of wearing boots? It
is
January.”

“Women suffer for their beauty,” she said, laughing.

Oh, the sound of it went right through his chest to his bones, settled there, set something ablaze.

Her voice turned solemn. “I sometimes imagine myself returning, stepping off the boat, taking off my shoes, and plowing my feet into the sand, or wading into the salty lick of the ocean. I even imagine the hot sun pouring over my face. It works on days like this when I can’t feel my feet.”

“I miss the ocean. I miss the currents and the power of it. It scared me too. I keep remembering one night—maybe a couple weeks before we left—Markos and I sat at our window peering out at the blackness. A storm was rolling in, we could hear it in the surf. It would slam against the rocks, huge booms. And then it started to thunder and lightning. It sounded as if the sky would collapse right on us. I remember shaking. Markos must have seen it because he told me—‘Don’t be afraid. God is in thunder. And the louder the thunder, the closer He is.’ He most likely heard my mother say it, but from then on, I stopped being afraid. Started listening for the thunder. Waited for it.”

She slipped again, and he leaned over, scooped her into his arms.

“Dino! What are you doing?”

“Keeping you from getting killed. It’s part of my Hippocratic oath.”

She put her hand on his chest. “Why did you decide to be a doctor?”

He turned down her street, cut through the alley, past a parked Packard, cold and dark.

“It seemed like the right thing. I made enough house calls with Dr. Scarpelli, saw how he cared for people—I wanted that. Everyone loves him.”

“You love him.”

“I admire him. And yes, probably I love him.”

She twined her arms around his neck, and she fitted there, like she’d always belonged. He hated reaching her porch and putting her down.

Probably he held her too long as he righted her.

She looked up at him, sighed, a smile touching her lips. “Are you hungry?”

Yes. He put his hand to her face, traced her mouth with his thumb. “I have the four a.m. shift. I need some sleep.”

Oh. Was he a jerk for liking how her face fell? He swallowed and for a second saw his arms around her, pulling her against him.

He wanted to know what those lips tasted like.

Lizzy.

The name slammed into him, and he stiffened. Had she meant so little to him that only six weeks after her death, his heart reeled out for another woman?

Not any woman. Sofia.

Markos’s Sofia. He shook his head again. “Sorry, Sof. Maybe another night.”

She patted his lapel, a softness in her blue eyes. They always seemed to follow him home, into his day, pull him back to the theater. “Thank you, Dino.” She lifted herself to his cheek, kissed him. “You are a true gentleman.”

Her words settled on him like a song even as he walked back down the empty alleyway home.

CHAPTER 15