She Can't Be

Giuseppe remembers when he had first seen her in the hospital, her hair so long, falling limply past her shoulders in its awful, neglected state. There, at that moment, it was like his heart had stopped. She doesn't remember, not now, but she must, he thinks, somehow she must, because whenever her hair starts to grow even an inch, it's back to the barber's, and she always looks so disappointed that he doesn't know what's harder to bear.

Yet she forgets so easily. She doesn't have to remember the days when her mother would sit her on her lap and gently brush out the tangles, but he can never forget how beautiful Enrica looked with her hair all in ribbons.

How wonderful it would be to forget.

"If I could have one more day with her," he'd wanted to plead to God, Death, anyone, "just one night, just one hour —"

And he had been given a little girl, a lifeless doll just as broken as he was, so similar but different in so many ways. "Henrietta." He wanted to fill the hole, wanted to love her, wanted this to be enough. He wanted so many things.

But from time to time, he felt that dull ache, and he knew that she could never be enough.

"What do you think?" she asks now, twirling shyly in the dress that isn't hers.

He smiles at her. "It's beautiful," he says, because he sees his sister in it.