THE RAIN ON CASTELLANO STREET Chapter 6

I woke up to the sound of my mother crying.

Not loud crying — the quiet kind. The kind where someone is trying very hard to hold it together and failing. I knew the sound. I had heard it once before, years ago, when my father was sick and my mother thought I was asleep and didn't know I could hear her through the wall.

I opened my eyes.

White ceiling. Fluorescent lights. The steady beep of a heart monitor somewhere to my left.

My mother was sitting in the chair beside my bed, a tissue twisted in her hands, tears sliding silently down her cheeks. When she saw me looking at her, she made a sound — something between a gasp and a sob — and grabbed my hand.

"Mara. Oh God, Mara. You're awake."

"Mom." My voice came out rough. Dry. "What happened?"

She squeezed my hand so tightly it hurt. "You're in the hospital. You've been here since last night."

Last night. The dinner. The hallway. Dom's hand on my stomach. The fall.

The blood.

I closed my eyes.

"The baby," I whispered.

My mother went very still.

"Mom. The baby."

Eileen Callahan had raised three children in a two-bedroom house on a teacher's salary. She had buried a husband. She had survived things that would have broken most people. But in that moment, sitting beside my hospital bed, she looked like someone had reached inside her chest and ripped something out.

"Mara," she said. Her voice was barely a sound. "I'm so sorry, sweetheart. They couldn't save it."

I didn't cry. Not right away. I lay there, perfectly still, staring at the ceiling, and felt something inside me go silent. Like a radio being switched off. One moment there was signal — hope, fear, the desperate wanting that had been driving everything for months — and the next, nothing.

Just quiet.

My mother held my hand and cried, and I let her, and I felt nothing at all.

It was a long time before I spoke again.

"How long was I unconscious?"

"Since last night. It's almost noon now."

"Does Dom know?"

My mother's expression changed. Something hard moved behind her eyes — the look of a mother who has just learned that her daughter's husband put her in the hospital.

"He's been here. Since three this morning. Your father threw him out."

"Dad?"

"He's been here too. Since we got the call." She paused. "Sean nearly took a swing at Dominic in the parking lot."

I almost smiled. My father was sixty-two years old and hadn't been in a fight since 1995, but the image of him squaring up against a Castellano made something warm flicker briefly in my chest.

"I don't want to see Dom," I said.

"I know, sweetheart."

"I mean it, Mom. If he comes back—"

"He won't get past your father. I promise."

I turned my head and looked at my mother — really looked at her. At the dark circles under her eyes, the way her cardigan was buttoned wrong, the half-eaten granola bar on the table beside her. She had rushed here in the middle of the night and hadn't left since.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Don't you dare apologize." Her grip on my hand tightened. "This is not your fault. Do you hear me? None of this is your fault."

I nodded. But I wasn't sure I believed her.

Because somewhere, in the back of my mind, a voice I couldn't quite silence was asking: If you had told him sooner — if you had said the words out loud — would he have been more careful? Would he have stopped himself?

Or would it have made no difference at all?

Dom tried to come back that evening. I heard him in the hallway — his voice, low and urgent, and my father's voice, steady and immovable, blocking the door.

"I need to see her," Dom said. "I need to explain—"

"You've done enough." My father's voice. Flat. Final. The voice of a man who had spent thirty years working with difficult people and knew exactly how much authority he could project without raising his volume.

"Mr. Callahan, please. I know what it looks like, but—"

"It looks like exactly what it is, son. Now get out of this hospital before I call someone who won't be as polite as I'm being."

A pause. Then footsteps, retreating.

I stared at the ceiling and listened, and felt the last thread of something — hope, maybe, or the memory of it — finally snap.