“I don’t know. They did what they thought was right, there was no guidebook to follow. My mom thought it was best for my oldest sister, Giulia. Giulia was born with Downs Syndrome, mom was her everything. It was to prepare her for mom not being there. Except it didn’t work...she just kind of gave up after mom died. It wasn’t even a year after that she died.”

“Damn, sweetheart, I’m sorry. All that loss back to back.” He hugs me close.

“Mm, it didn’t stop there though. Valentina, my older sister, the middle one, she changed. As far as she was concerned it was all dad’s fault mom died then Giulia. She got really mean and bitter. Then the week she turned eighteen when I was only fifteen she ran away. My dad, it hit him really hard. For a while, he did the zombie thing just getting through the day. I got a little wild, skipping school, getting drunk, smoking pot, anything to get his attention. It finally worked, dad got super strict and mean.

“Then just when we were getting back to a new kind of normal, he got sick. It was hard. It was a crazy kind of best of times, worst of times thing. Dad, he was trying to cram decades into months for after he was gone. It didn’t end up being quite as short of a time as the doctors said, instead of six months we got two years.

“We spent weeks in the kitchen, with him teaching me how to cook, days in the garage with him teaching me how to change a tire, my oil, my brakes, sometimes I feel like I should buy a car just so I can do everything he taught me.”

Leo hugs me tight, “I cannot imagine how hard it was to take care of someone knowing they were going to die.”

I shrug. “I was just doing what needed to be done. He took care of everyone, he deserved to have someone take care of him in the end. Dad was so annoyed I wasn’t going to school. He made me promise after he died I’d go right to school. He went on and on about the insurance he got after mom died because they didn’t have insurance on her and it was really hard for him afterward. I hated going to school after he died but it gave me some sanity having somewhere to go, instead of trying to find a new job. Considering I lost my waitressing job in the last few weeks before dad died because I kept missing shifts.”

“Fuck, that’s tough.”

I don’t want to talk about me anymore. “Mm, tougher than growing up with a physically and mentally abusive grandmother? It wasn’t easy to get through, I survived. At least I had kindness and love growing up.”