Sweet Hope

Dante leaned over to look at my daughter and he then looked up at me, his pink lips pursed. “What her name?” he asked in his cute ass baby talk. He was so fucking adorable.

“Yeah, Axe,” Levi said, “What’re you calling our niece?”

As I stared down at my daughter, I got lost in her pretty sleeping rosy face and said, “I wanna call her Chiara.”

Silence met my words and I tensed. I wasn’t sure if my brothers would be okay with my daughter being named after our mamma.

That’s until I looked up and both of them were watching me with tears in their eyes. “Axe,” Levi said, his voice breaking. “Mamma would be so damn proud that your daughter shared her name. I can just imagine how happy she’d be if she was here right now.”

“Yeah,” Austin said, equally as choked up. “Mamma’s looking down at her now and she’s fucking smiling, Axe. Smiling so big.” Austin looked at my daughter. He leaned down and kissed her forehead. “Chiara,” he said lovingly then Levi followed suit. “Little Chiara Carillo.”

My heart was so full as the five of us sat here in silence. All three of us brothers unable to speak until Dante suddenly pointed up at the sky and said, “Papa... big star!”

Austin laughed at his son shattering our poignant moment and squeezed him to his chest, ruffling his dark hair. “Si, Dante. A big star. Le stelle grande,” he said in Italian.

Dante watched Austin’s lips and said, “Lee stel ee gan de.”

We all laughed as Dante tried to speak Italian. “Bene!” Austin told his son, and tickled Dante until he burst into fits of giggles. “Molto bene!”

Turning to Levi, I watched him squinting up at the stars and realized he never got to remember stargazing with Austin and me all those years ago, he was too young. But it should be something he got to share with us now.

Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and leaning back against the wall with my daughter cradled in my arms, I said, “Austin, tell us what those stars are.”

Austin looked over at me, and I could see his eyes gloss over at the request. We hadn’t done this since we were little kids trying to escape our abusive papa.

Austin carefully placed Dante higher on his lap, Dante squealing with excitement. He stared up at the night sky.

I turned to Levi. “Look up, Lev.”

Shaking his head and smiling at us, Levi leaned back and looked up.

Austin pointed at three stars in a row. “The three stars there are called Orion’s Belt. You can tell it’s Orion’s Belt by the way they’re all in a row. You see?”

I listened to Austin explain constellation after constellation, Dante and Chiara now part of our Carillo tradition. And as the minutes passed, a sense of peace and calmness washed over me.

We’d made it.

The three of us, lying here staring at the stars like we did so long ago, had made it.

We were the Carillo boys. Three brothers born into chaos and pain. Three brothers who’d endured tragedy and loss. Brothers until the end, bound by blood, our bonds unbreakable by unconditional love.

And I was sure that up in that sky, there was an angel looking down on her sons, a smile on her face and a prideful happiness in her heart.

The End