The Sicilian Inheritance

by Jo Piazza

“Are you divorced now?” I couldn’t help asking. I enjoy women who have more problems than I do.

Since becoming a mother, I barely had time to remember all the things I once wanted, all the lives I hoped to lead, but sometimes the desire all flooded back and I felt a small death. I thought joking about surrendering my baby to Cettina

Maybe permanency was not the only metric of success. My marriage didn’t work out, but I got a wonderful daughter out of it. My restaurant was a great success, just not forever because forever is hard. Maybe I couldn’t do it all and be everything to everyone and that had to be OK.

“I betrayed you,” she told me when we finally spoke of it. “I told him everything we did. How we lied. How you were alive. I told him at the very, very end, and it was worth the betrayal. He died with a smile on his lips.”

I hid, lied, and disappeared to create this marvel, this brilliant, educated, independent woman singing alone in her car in front of a house that she owned, a woman beholden to no man. I saved myself, but I also gave my daughter the chance to be her own person.