What if St. Easy doesn’t even exist?

You should see the beautiful girls here.

What if Willa’s postcard meant something else?

Hope and horror wrestle for dominance.

“No, you know what’s weird? Besides putting an -e at the end of good and randomly capitalizing nouns? It’s that we lived with Mary Ballardo’s mother for years and she didn’t say a word about her own daughter’s womanhood being rendered.”

“Hush, Goody. Just…” He bounces a downturned palm.

Am I shouting? You bet I am.

“Except she threatened me with it a hundred times like it was the damn boogieman. And she knew. She knew!”

And Dario knew. He said This was before we had a place to send her.

And there it is.

I snap the paper back from Massimo and check the date. Massimo caught it right away. The date is after her funeral.

“You shouldn’t think about it, Sarah.” Massimo’s not making a suggestion. He’s bearing down on me with a soft command padded to look like advice.

“Are you serious?”

“There’s probably a boring explanation.”

“Is everything all right?” Grandma’s in the doorway, all questions and submission.

Once Massimo’s out of the room, she may tell me what happened to her daughter. She may also shrug it off and tell me to mind my own business. She might pinch me or slap me.

But she’ll never tell me the truth. That’s for me to find alone.

“Why did we move out of StuyTown, Grandma?”

“Well, when your mother died, your father needed me to take care of you, and this apartment had more room for me.”

“No,” I say. “No. It didn’t. We moved so Mom couldn’t find us.”

“That’s not—”

“Gram.” Massimo snaps the paper away from me and shows it to her. “Stop.”

My grandmother looks frailer with the lies stripped away. “She left you behind.”

“So you had a fucking funeral?” I cry.

“Your mouth!”

“Don’t you dare change the subject. You told us she was dead!”

“She was. To us. She turned her back on us. Then she comes back like she had the right… defiled by the outside, wearing jeans and short hair. And she demands her children. But you didn’t belong to her. You belonged to us. So we sent her away. You should be thanking your father—God rest his soul—for making it so she wasn’t allowed to come back.”

“Jesus, Grandma.” Massimo drops back in a chair and rubs his eyes.

“Is that it?” I demand, shoving the severance paper in her face. I need her to deal with the hollowing. The womanly parts rendered down like bacon fat. She won’t look at it.

“That’s all there is to know.”