I hold my hands out toward the campfire, warming them. The air is crisp with the scent of cold weather and leaves, even though they have only just started to change color.

“Why haven’t I ever seen you dating anyone, Aunt Jo?” I ask, looking up at her. “You’re hilarious and tough and I can’t imagine that people don’t fall all over themselves to ask you out.”

Aunt Jo sips her cider and rum, which I suspect is mostly rum, and leans back in her folding chair. “Not all fabulous people have long-term relationships, Nova. Some of us are just too bright to be tied down,” she says. “Besides, can you imagine me tolerating something like that for the rest of my life?” She nods her head in the direction of my dad’s tent, from which comes a loud snore. “I have half a mind to go throw a rock at him as it is.”

I laugh. “But you always said that when you were a girl you thought you’d have five children.”

“Ah, but then Matilde had you, and you were perfect with those pink cheeks and that laugh. That laugh…,” she says, and shakes her head. “It used to make me cry, you know. I see you looking at me like I’m a sentimental fool, which I very well might be, but it did. Your father would come into a room and find the three of us in hysterics. You laughing and us crying because we could not stand how adorable it all was. And since you were such a perfect baby, I figured that unless I had one exactly like you I would be forced to call it Secondo and dress it up in your old clothes.”

“Stop, you would not,” I say, grinning.

“You doubt this face?” she says, and wags her eyebrows at me.

“Never,” I say, stirring my hot cider with a cinnamon stick.

“Why the sudden interest in my love life, eh? Have you got some passionately romantic story to tell me?” she asks mischievously.

“What? No. I wish. I just…You know my best friend, Emily? She has a huge family and they have these big festive holiday parties. Sometimes I get jealous. I kind of wish there were more of us, you know?”

She snorts and takes a sip of her drink.

“What, you don’t?” I say.

“No,” she says, spilling more rum into her cup. “I have relatives in Italy I would rather forget. First there’s that self-serving father of mine, and then all the family members who won’t admit that he’s self-serving, which in my opinion makes them even worse.” She raises her cup. “To hell with the whole lot of them.”

I want to tell her that I meant I wish we had more family members like us, but I know better than to do that while she’s ranting and damning people. She blames her dad for my mom’s death, even though everyone—and the autopsy report—said her death was an accident.