Memories Without Him novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: I Love You, Said the Assignment
Gemma texts the Don who raised her, gets a cold reply, is shut out for six months, learns about the tumor and goes to say goodbye. Aldo tells her Vincent is at his engagement dinner tonight.
On a Tuesday afternoon, in a lecture hall with two hundred students, my professor gave us an assignment.
"Text the words I love you to the family member you're closest to," he said. "Then write down their first reaction."
Everyone laughed and pulled out their phones.
I held mine and thought about who I had.
My parents had died seven years ago, in an ambush meant for the Arcuri family.
I was fifteen.
The court had given me to Vincent Arcuri, the youngest Don in New York, as my temporary guardian.
He had never hugged me once in the three years he had the job.
He called me every night at nine, though.
Vincent never texted anyone. He phoned, even to say goodnight.
I typed the message anyway.
Vincent, I love you.
I sent it before I could think and put the phone face down on the desk.
The three dots appeared, and then they disappeared.
They did it all night.
I watched them from my bed until the window turned gray.
At 2:04 a.m. the answer came.
Gemma, you're mistaking being looked after for love. There is nothing between us, and there won't be.
I read it until the screen went dark.
It came as a text, and I remember thinking that was strange.
I told myself he was tired.
The next morning my phone would not call his private line.
The number had been disconnected.
My allowance card was declined at the coffee cart outside the library.
My name had been taken off the list at the garage where I parked.
I took the subway to Arcuri Tower in Lower Manhattan and walked toward the revolving doors.
Two guards stepped in front of me.
I knew both of them. One had taught me to ride a bike in the Tower garage.
"I'm sorry, Miss Sorrento," he said. "The Don's order was clear."
"I only need two minutes with him."
"He said we could let in a man from a rival family tonight. He said not you."
I stood on the pavement until my feet hurt.
Nobody came out.
After that, I saw Vincent at christenings and at funerals and once at the opening of a restaurant.
Every time, he saw me across the room and left first.
He turned his back and walked out through the kitchen once, with a whole table of people watching.
I stopped going to things.
I told myself that was my choice.
It lasted six months.
Then, on a Friday in March, I woke up unable to say the word for the thing I was holding.
It was a cup.
I stood in my kitchen with it in my hand and said "the, the hot, the" until my roommate came in and looked at my face.
At the hospital the doctor put an image of my brain up on a screen.
He pointed with a pen at a white shape the size of a plum.
"It's a high-grade glioma," he said. "It's growing into the part of the brain that holds language and memory."
I asked him how long.
"If we operate soon, there's a chance. But it may take memories with it. Most often the recent ones."
"How recent?"
"I can't tell you until I'm in there."
I asked if I would forget my own name.
He looked at me for a long time.
"Is there someone we should call?" he said.
I thought of every person I loved, and it was a short list with one name at the top.
"No," I said. "There's no one."
I went home and opened a notebook.
On the first page I wrote: Before I forget his name.
Under it, I wrote down everything I could remember about Vincent Arcuri, in order.
The way he took his coffee. The scar on his jaw. The night he sat outside my door for six hours after the funeral and never knocked.
I wrote it until my hand hurt.
Then I closed the notebook and made a decision.
I would see him once before the surgery, and I would say goodbye to his face.
So I put on my good green dress and went back to the Tower.
It was snowing.
The guards saw me coming and both of them went stiff.
Before they could move, a man in a gray overcoat stepped out through the revolving door and opened an umbrella over my head.
It was Aldo Brunetti, the underboss, who had been at my father's funeral and carried my mother's casket.
"Gemma," he said, and his voice was warm. "Look at you. You're soaked and you're shaking."
"I need to see Vincent."
"Honey, I know." He sighed and shook his head. "The Don gave the order about the doors himself. I argued with him. It did no good."
He took my elbow gently.
"He isn't here, anyway," he said. "Come on, I'll drive you home before you freeze."
He put me in the back of his car and turned the heat up.
At the first red light he looked at me in the mirror and his face went careful.
"You should hear it from me and not from the papers," Aldo said. "He's at the Orsini family's restaurant tonight."
"Why?"
"It's his engagement dinner, sweetheart. He's marrying Francesca Orsini."
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