The moon goddess chose wrong: twice
I went to find Gia.
She was in the kitchen, as she usually was at this hour, the particular morning ritual we had developed over the past months without ever formally discussing it, coffee and quiet conversation before the day properly began.
“You look like you have news,” she said, not looking up from the herbs she was sorting.
“Enzo is going to propose to Nina,” I said.
Gia’s hands stilled.
She looked up at me with an expression that moved through several things very quickly, surprise and joy and something else underneath both of those, the particular complicated grief that arrived whenever something wonderful happened that Elena should have been alive to see.