Nonna harrumphed.
“He talked to Dad.”
“The director of this program talked to your father,” Nonna repeated. “And what did my son say to this man who could not be bothered to introduce himself to me?”
I explained as much as I could. I gave her a pamphlet that Agent Briggs had given me—one that didn’t mention words like profiling or serial killers or FBI.
“It’s a small program,” I said. “At a kind of group home.”
“And your father, he said you could go?” Nonna narrowed her eyes at the smiling kids on the front of the pamphlet, like they were personally responsible for leading her precious granddaughter astray.
“He already signed the papers, Nonna.” I looked down at my hands, which had woven themselves together at my waist. “I’m going to go.”
There was silence. Then a sharp intake of breath. And then an explosion.
I didn’t speak Italian, but based on the emphatic gestures and the way she was spitting out the words, I was able to make an educated guess at a translation.
Nonna’s granddaughter was moving cross-country to enroll in a government-sponsored gifted program over her dead and rotting corpse.
— — —
Nobody stages an intervention like my father’s family stages an intervention. The Bat-Signal had nothing on the Battaglia-Signal, and less than twenty-four hours after Nonna sent out the distress call, the family had gathered in force. There was yelling and screaming and crying—and food. Lots of food. I was threatened and cajoled, browbeaten and clasped to multiple bosoms. But for the first time since I’d met this half of my family tree, I couldn’t just temper my reactions to theirs. I couldn’t give them what they wanted. I couldn’t pretend.
The noise built to a crescendo, and I drew into myself and waited for it to pass. Eventually, they’d notice that I wasn’t saying anything.
“Cassie, sweetheart, aren’t you happy here?” one of my aunts asked finally. The rest of the table fell silent.
“I’m …” I couldn’t say any more than that. I saw the realization pass over their faces. “It’s not that I’m not happy,” I interjected quickly. “It’s just …”
For once, they heard what I wasn’t saying. From the moment they’d learned of my existence, I’d been family to them. They hadn’t realized that in my own eyes, I’d always been—and maybe always would be—an outsider.
“I need to do this,” I said, my voice as quiet as theirs had been loud. “For my mom.”
That was closer to the truth than I’d ever meant to tell them.
“You think your mother would have wanted you to do this?” Nonna asked. “To leave the family that loves you, that will take care of you, to go off to the other side of the country, alone, to do God knows what?”
It was meant as a rhetorical question, but I answered it: vehemently, decisively.
“Yes.” I paused, expecting an argument, but I didn’t get one. “I know you don’t like it, and I hope you don’t hate me for it, but I have to do this.” I stood up. “I leave in three days. I’d really like to come back for Christmas, but if you don’t want me here, I’d understand.”
Nonna crossed the room in a second, surprisingly spry for someone her age. She poked a vicious finger into my chest. “You come home for Christmas,” she said in a manner that made it quite clear she considered it an order. “You even think about not coming home?” She narrowed her eyes and drew her poking finger across her neck in a menacing fashion. “Capisce?”
A smile tugged at the edge of my lips, and tears burned in my eyes. “Capisce.”
CHAPTER 6
Three days later, I left for the program. Michael was the one who came to pick me up. He parked out at the curb and waited.
“I do not like this,” Nonna told me for maybe the thousandth time.
“I know.” I brushed a kiss against her temple, and she cupped my head in her hands.
“You be good,” she said fiercely. “You be careful. Your father,” she added, as an afterthought. “I am going to kill him.”
I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Michael standing with his back to a gleaming black Porsche. From a distance, I couldn’t make out the expression on his face, but I had a suspicion that he wasn’t having any trouble interpreting my feelings.
“I’ll be careful,” I told Nonna, turning my back on the boy with the discerning eye. “Promise.”
“Eh,” she said finally. “How much trouble can you get into? There are only a few students in the entire school.”
A few students who were being trained to analyze crime scenes, pore over witness testimony, and track serial killers. What trouble could we possibly get into?
Without another word, I hauled my bag out to the car. Nonna followed and, when Michael opened the trunk but made no move to help me with my bag, she shot him a disapproving look.
“You are just going to stand there?” she asked.
With an almost imperceptible smirk, Michael took the bag from my hand and hoisted it effortlessly into the trunk. Then he leaned close, into my personal space, and whispered, “And here I’d pegged you as the kind of girl who’d want to do the heavy lifting herself.”
Nonna eyed me. She eyed Michael. She eyed what little space there was between the two of us. And then she made a harrumphing sound.
“Anything happens to her,” she told Michael, “this family—we know how to dispose of a body.”
Instead of giving in to the mortification and burying my head in my hands, I said good-bye to Nonna and climbed into the car. Michael followed suit.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
Michael arched one eyebrow. “About the death threat, or the imaginary chastity belt she’s fitting you with as we speak?”
“Shut up.”
“Oh, come on, Cassie. I think it’s nice. You have a family that cares.”
Maybe he thought that was nice, and maybe he didn’t. “I don’t want to talk about my family.”
Michael grinned, completely undeterred. “I know.”
I thought back to what Agent Briggs had told me about Michael’s gift.
“You read emotions,” I said.
“Facial expressions, posture, gestures, the works,” he said. “You nibble on the inside of your lip when you’re nervous. And you get this little wrinkle at the corner of your right eye when you’re trying not to stare.”