Elena
W e were a happy family once. I remember a time when my dad would come home from work with a grin on his face. He would pick me up and swing me around on his shoulders, then fist bump Tony before kissing my mother. Back when we lived in Detroit, they were in love and everything was perfect. Then we moved to New York and it was honestly the beginning of the end.
Their relationship started having fissures soon after, tiny cracks that neither of them could fix. It’s been my biggest life lesson—through my parents, I learned just how quickly you can fall out of love with a person.
I’ll never blame my father for what happened, but according to him, one of the reasons my mother left was that she couldn’t handle his new job situation. She didn’t like that he was working for the mafia. It’
