Water runs.
The tub fills.
Giovanni returns, lifts Emmaleen again, carries her to the bath. Lowers her in with hands that shake slightly—barely visible, but I see it. I see everything now.
He kneels beside the tub. Starts washing her. Shoulders first. Arms. Each movement deliberate, careful, tender.
His mouth moves. Talking. Always talking.
I adjust the audio feed again, fine-tuning until his voice clarifies.
"...loved words too. My mother. Remember how I told you she'd read to me before bed.The Little Prince. She called me that…"
Aunt Priscilla. Giovanni is talking about his dead mother.
To a girl who can't hear him. Can't process. Can't respond.
"...poetry. She's the one who taught me about terza rima. I told you that, right? The trinity structure. Past, present, futureall woven together. She said it proved time wasn't linear, just... circular. Everything coming back around..."
He's washing Emmaleen's hair now. Gentle. Methodical.
"...died when I was twelve. Car accident. Except it wasn't. Angelo told me years later. Suicide. She drove into that bridge on purpose..."
Emmaleen's eyes are closed. Tears slip down her cheeks, mixing with bathwater.
Giovanni doesn't notice. Or pretends not to.
Just keeps talking. Keeps confessing to someone who isn't conscious enough to bear witness.
"...left a note. Just one line. 'I'm sorry I couldn't love you enough to stay.'"
Disturbed.
The word arrives as a clinical diagnosis.
My cousin is deeply, profoundly disturbed.
Not broken the way Emmaleen is broken. Not fragmented by external forces.
Broken from the inside. Shattered by accumulated trauma he's never processed, never addressed, never allowed himself to feel.
The kidnapping. Aunt Priscilla's suicide. Whatever happened at Auggies with Lorcan and the dog story.
And that's just shit I know about. God only knows what he's been up to since. There's at least a decade between us now where I wasn't even around. Too busy with my own life on the Pittsburgh riverfront.
Meanwhile, layer upon layer of violence and grief has calcified into the armor Giovanni calls control.
But it's not control.
It's dissociation. Compartmentalization. The monster and the man, kept separate because allowing them to mergewould mean confronting everything he's done, everything he's survived, everything he's become.
I watch Giovanni rinse Emmaleen's hair. Watch him drain the tub. Watch him lift her out, wrap her in a towel that's too thin to provide real warmth, carry her back to the bed.
He dresses her in the transparent nightgown and lies her down, posing her in the fetal position. No covers. There were never any covers in that room. Hell, the bed doesn’t even have sheets. And while I do realize that it was planned that way for a reason, for fuck’s sake, how the hell can he look at her—shivering and shaking from the cold—and not be compelled to go find her a fucking blanket?
He doesn’t notice her. Not really. He’s not seeing her at all.
He’s seeing… something else.