"No, thanks." Marinette firmly puts Lila at arm's length.
"You can't just walk away from this."
"Watch me."
Marinette swivels on her heel and starts walking to the bathroom door.
"Look, I know how this works!" Lila grips Marinette's arm to halt her. The raven-haired teen narrows her blue eyes in a nasty glower, but the witch is undeterred. "There's no end to vendetta. If you and your grandma are still alive, then men will be after you. If you don't want any of your friends or family to be hurt, then you've got to play the game."
"I trust my Nonna," Marinette pulls her arm free of Lila's talons. "She would never let any of us get hurt."
At this, Lila gives her a look that's equal parts sarcastic and amused.
"Fine. I still trust her more than you."
"Do you?"
Marinette scoffs and starts to turn away again—
"No, really," Lila says. "You came to me looking for answers. Why not your Nonna?'
"That's none of your business!" Marinette calls without looking back.
"But isn't it?!"
The question follows Marinette out as she swings the door open and leaves.
Some of the elderly are staring at her again, on her way home.
Yeah, they definitely look like they've seen a ghost.
Marinette jaunts her eyebrow at the ones that stare too hard. She's always had a soft spot for her seniors, but senior or no, staring is rude. Most of them blink and flinch, as if waking up from a daydream. They turn their head and either shake it slowly or gaze into the distance, probably wondering where their marbles have gone. One guy, though, he grits his teeth and glares at her.
The old gentleman(?) sits at the corner of the street outside his modest boutique. Mild-mannered mannequins in mens suits fill the building's tall windows. A small wooden bench that also appears tailor-made is his perch, situated just aside the entrance to his store, out of the way of most foot-traffic. The man's eyes are keen, unglazed, despite his age. His gaze is sharp and eagle-like as Marinette pauses just short of the crosswalk, staring back at him in surprise, wondering what she had done to deserve his malice.
She considers just ignoring him, but the hate is too concentrated, too real. "Sir–"
"No. I'm too old," Marinette has hardly said a single word before the old man is snapping at her. "Go tell your mother, or your father, I don't care, just leave me alone. No more suits."
Marinette's jaw falls and rises, falls and rises as she searches for words. "What?"
"No more suits!" The man shouts, garnering attention from passerby. "You hear me? I don't make suits."
Marinette spares a glance for the boutique fully stocked of nothing but suits.
Speechless, Marinette decides to respect the man's wish to be left alone and, after checking that the road is clear, hurriedly crosses the street.
She doesn't follow her usual route to the boulangerie patisserie. Today, Marinette is visiting her grandfather. She knows he has to be lonely. Stubborn, he only comes out on special occasions, but she has no such reservations and has the time to make the trip to his house every once in a while. And the past few years, she's more or less kept to her resolution to remain a part of his life– she'd detested being estranged from any of her family and will avoid it if she can.
While most of her visits are spontaneous, her grandfather is expecting her this time; when Marinette knocks on his door, he answers sooner rather than later, he's dressed in day clothes instead of his pajamas, and he doesn't scowl.
He does blink his eyes owlishly at her, though.
"Ah, Marinette! You have—how was the walk?"
Accepting her grandpa's brief embrace—and pretending to not notice his trouble—Marinette explains that while not the worst she's ever had, it could have been less stressful. Her grandpa makes funny faces when she tells him about the old people staring, and the one guy that even had the nerve to shout and lie at her.
"The world is going bonkers," he grumbles as he shuts the door and walks past her into the sitting room.
"Normally, I'd say you're being dramatic, but I don't know…"
"Anyway, don't mind crazies. Come here,"
Rolland guides his granddaughter to a small closet in between the kitchen and sitting room, ensconced under the staircase to the second floor. He flips the door open and Marinette swears a bat flies out of there. Thick cobwebs crowd the corners and a layer of dust coats everything. Grandpa Rolland reaches his arm in the dark space and pulls an antiquated chain. A yellow lightbulb flickers on, weakly illuminating the closet.
Marinette recovers form her flinch, leaning into the closet with a hand over her nose, waving the dusty air away. "Grandpa, I never did ask: how old is this house?"
"Your great, great grandfather was the first to own this house, but it may have been around before that. Why?"
Crouching down to get a better look at the chest on the ground, Marinette answers, "Just curious."
"That's your first assignment," Her grandfather waddles in a little, grabs ahold of one of the chest's handles, and pulls it from the back with a low growl. He drops it unceremoniously with a fatigued grunt and has to catch his breath. "Go through there and toss anything that looks useless," he huffs. "If you aren't sure about something, ask me. I'll be in the kitchen."
That's all the instruction she's going to get. Without further ado, Marinette begins figuring out how to open the chest.
A nice little treasure hunt later, Marinette re-approaches the chest with a key in hand. Popping the lock, she lifts the lid and peers in.
The chest is full of pretty old things. Most of them must be from her grandpa's childhood. Marinette digs through, identifying a checkbook, a worn hat, and a faded red spinning top, among other thins. At times she would come across strange, moth-eaten artifacts that could no longer be identified. She tosses those in the waste bin her grandpa drags over. Most of the items are charming insights into her grandpa's early life, but it isn't until she comes across a photo album that Marinette is truly intrigued– something about being able to see the full picture is exciting.
Immediately fascinated by the medium-sized book, she flips it open. The album begins with a black-and-white photo of a baby. In the bottom right corner of the photo, in small, elegant script, is written, Rolland, 1944.
Marinette continues flipping through the pages, seeing glimpses of family, friends, houses, cars, parks. Somewhere in the second third of the book, she stops. The page she lingers on doesn't have a date. Tucked securely into the plastic pocket is a scene from history. A young man sits at a table, one arm propped on it and the other atop his knee. Across from him is a young lady with a beaming smile. The young man looks happily surprised, or maybe unimpressed in an amused way. He's looking at the camera and she's not looking at anything, eyes scrunched close. The way the light hits their faces but leaves the background a strange amalgamation of shadows indicates the flash was likely on, and the photo was snapped at night.
"Hey, grandpa!" Marinette calls to him in the kitchen, "Who's this?"
Her grandpa shouts back something mildly grumpy and mostly gibberish as he moves some things around in the kitchen. A few moments later he's waddling into the sitting room where Marinette is crouched in front of his old chest. He stands behind the girl and peers over her shoulder to see what she's looking at. He has to lean forward and squint, his outdated glasses a poor aid for his failing vision.
In lieu of an answer, her grandpa sighs soft and long, placing one hand on her shoulder and carefully taking the picture from her with the other. Marinette turns her head to watch him questioningly. She is surprised by the emotions that take over his expression: nostalgia and affection—on a man who never has want for the past because he always lives in it, and who saves most his affection for his only granddaughter.
After a minute goes by and her grandpa has still said nothing, Marinette asks him about the picture again. "Grandpa?"
Rolland blinks and seems to come out of a daydream. His soft smile, which had only grown in tiny increments since he'd retrieved the photo, falls, morphing into a reluctant and sobering frown. His hand lowers absently as he looks away from Marinette, into the distance at nothing in particular. Marinette gingerly pulls the photo from his loose grasp and stands.
"This is you, isn't? Who's next to you? And what year is this from?"
Shaking his head to clear the webs, her grandpa gestures towards the picture, asking for it back. He nods. "That's me. It was 1961." He looks at it for a long moment then adds, pointing to the young woman, "And this is your grandmother."
"You look pretty happy here." Marinette can't help but notice. It's the most content and easy she's ever seen him.
He nods, and laments, "I was."
"What was going on? Do you remember?" Marinette looks from the picture to his conflicted expression and feels nervous, remembering that while on speaking terms now, her grandparents had divided rather bitterly. She didn't mean to be insensitive. "I mean, unless, if you don't wanna talk about it…"
"You can't tell because pictures were not so great back then," her grandpa says slowly in his low, gravelly voice, "but your grandmother, then, you're… the spitting image of her at that age."
To say Marinette is pleasantly surprised is an understatement. She'd been expecting him to snap at her and stomp off to let off steam, and take the book with him. Instead he gives the photo back for her to tuck into the album and pats her on the head. A long look at her later, and he smiles, a sadness in the corners of his mouth that Marinette can see but can't understand. She can't stand not knowing why it's there.
"You want to take a break? I'll make us some pain au chocolat as a treat."
"Sure, grandpa. That sounds nice."
Her eyes open and she's in a car. They're on the road, and the engine is powerful. The driver makes use of it, taking off on green lights so fast there's smoke on the road behind them and turning aggressively. Despite the wild driving, Marinette finds herself at ease.
In the seat beside her is a young man. He's strangely familiar. He looks at her with pensive fondness. Behind him, through the window, the street lights flicker in and out of sight. The inside of the car brightens then dims, revealing it's night.
They arrive at a local eatery named Ristorante Famiglia.
Rather than enter through the front with everyone else, Marinette finds herself walking through a side entrance, winding through the staff hallways. They are met by her father who take their orders and seats them at a table in a secluded corner shrouded in shadow.
Time passes strangely. Everything is silent yet buzzing with activity. The young man seated with her at the table goes back forth between pensively looking at her and gazing into the restaurant. She never looks away from his modest features, her smile a fixture on her face. Light flashes and chairs move. An hours-long conversation ends in the blink of an eye with no words exchanged.
Once she's home, Marinette kicks off her shoes and trudges up the stairs. She goes straight to the bathroom to clean herself up and prepare for bed. As she enters, she looks in the mirror and sees herself grinning brilliantly, all the color drained from her face, hair, and shirt.
"Hey, dad?"
"Yes, my sugar dumpling?"
Marinette pauses, her strange dream from last night running through her mind before she shakes it off. "You wouldn't happen to know Nonna's maiden name… would you?"
Her father misses a beat, but picks up again like nothing happened.
"Oh, uh–why the sudden interest?"
Marinette watches her father. His large frame fills half the kitchen by itself. He kneads some biscuit dough for breakfast while her mother is downstairs opening the boulangerie for the morning. Kneading the dough is hard work, but Tom Dupain has always made it look easy. Marinette narrows her eyes at the concern wrinkling his brow.
"Just curious," she answers, "I know mom's maiden name, and auntie, and even Grandma Cheng's maiden name."
"Well, to be fair, your mother's maiden name is still a part of her name."
"That's true. But we still never talk about Nonna or Grandpa's families or past names."
"Well, that's…"
"Come on, dad, you have to know. Don't hold out on me!" Marinette groans.
Her father deflates slightly, casting her a loving glance that's inexplicably tinged by something sad. He sighs as he finishes separating the dough into discs. "It's Mozzarella."
"…Really, dad?"
"What?"
Marinette gapes at him. "That sounds exactly like a dad joke! You have to try harder than that."
Tom dusts his hands free of extra flour. "No, her maiden name really is Mozzarella!"
"Mozzarella…?" Marinette repeats to herself.
"I know. Happy coincidence!"
After staring at her father in disbelief, Marinette beams at him in gratitude. "Thanks, dad!" She jumps out of her seat at the table and zips upstairs. Five minutes later, Marinette zips back down in outing clothes. Her father looks up from putting the biscuits in the preheated oven and raises an aggrieved eyebrow at her.
"Where are you off to?"
"Oh, just some studying." Marinette tells him. It's not a lie.
Her father seems to forget his regret at not being able to have breakfast with her this morning. His face lights up with pride. "That's my girl! A model student even on weekends. Are you going to the library?"
"Yes! I like the atmosphere, you know how easily distracted I can be. I won't be long!" Marinette pecks her father on the cheek. "Later, papa!"
Tom blinks and his daughter is out of sight.
The library is surprisingly full this Saturday. Marinette walks across the building toward the west section, wondering if she'll be able to get a conference room like she wanted. By coincidence, she happens to ask the librarian about it just as someone's time in the room is ending. Within just a few minutes Marinette is sitting in a small sound-proof room with her laptop and snacks ready on the table.
She sits there, drumming her fingers against the table thoughtlessly. She's navigated to the Googs home page, but Marinette herself at a loss for how to start her search, so she just stares at the text cursor blinking in and out of sight, in and out of sight.
After ten minutes, she pushes the air out of her cheeks and decides to just put it in there.
mozzarella last name
The search results include etymology, artists, scientists, and cheese. Not what she's looking for. Marinette looks around nervously. Noticing that no-one in the library seems to care about her presence at all, she replaces the search with something more specific.
mozzarella mafia
Biting her lip, Marinette hesitantly clicks "Enter."