Sweet Karoline Read Online Free

cape. Karoline's matching brown one was left hanging limp and abandoned.
    Suddenly I was sitting at our dining room table surrounded by the officers. With his broad shoulders and thick arms, Ethan overwhelmed the delicate chairs, but he managed to look graceful in his dark blue jacket and snow-white shirt. The tie, splashed with pink and aqua lines, looked incongruous with the gravity of his suit.
    " As I said," Ethan repeated, "I'm Detective Byrne. I'm following up, now that Officer Peters and her team have completed the first part of the investigation."
    The slight lilt to his speech, hinting at origins other than the United States, sent me careening back to high school.
     
    When I met Giulio, he'd just arrived 'off the boat' as our classmates would say. They were proud and superior now that the majority of them were generations away from their own ancestors' immigration. Despite his chronological age, Giulio was immediately placed in the lowest grade the school could get away with. He was tiny-boned and thin, very unlike most of his Italian paisans. Feminine and soft voiced, he fit in with no one.
    Karoline had instantly adopted him. Their own little weird unit of two had immediately embraced me.
    At first it was difficult to understand Giulio. Over time, however, I was able to relate to his gestures, recognize a few words and interpret him as only friends can. Giulio embraced his new language slowly and never fully spoke without a thick and stumbling accent. This may have explained Mrs. St. James's erroneous judgment that he was slow.
    Karoline, on the other hand, was almost instantly fluent in all three languages—Polish, Italian and English—as though born to absorb words.
    My mother was delighted with my friends. A fierce and loyal Canadian who'd been forcibly transported to the United States by the man she loved, she embraced differences in culture and race with a showy, dedicated flare. She became decidedly more African in her roots, which I found embarrassing. She invited Karoline and Giulio over to savor her native meals and desserts, recipes handed down from ancestors so distant that I doubted they were even hers.
    Struggling to be so accepting and open made her look pathetic and false in my eyes. I was appalled that my parents were mixed race, leaving me in a limbo between the two. Not only that, they'd moved me to a town where the vast majority of people were white. While cultural differences piqued my mother's interest, I was at the opposite end of the spectrum. I wished I could just be like everybody else. White, ordinary-looking. Unworthy of stares, adoration, curiosity and hatred.
    The kids at school stayed far away from us in the cafeteria at lunch while Giulio munched his sausages and capicolli. Years later, when garlic became the rage, I would remember the sweet salty smell of Giulio and laugh to myself as the spice was 'discovered' by the rest of our acquaintances.
    Once we reached high school, Giulio confided in Karoline and me that he was gay. We were the only ones he told. Giulio was our friend, our mentor, our guide and now he was a safety net all in one. He promised that, should he or we not find our true loves, we would live together into old age. But that was before our trip to Italy.
     
    Dear Diary,
    Maybe it's their inheritance and upbringing that has caused them to remain so childlike. One a pampered little boy, the only son, surrounded by doting females who did everything for him, the other a contradiction of appearance and concept.

 
    Chapter 3
     
    I returned to the present with Detective Byrne's prompting. I noticed that he was staring at me curiously. He cleared his throat.
    " Ms. Williams." His accent mingled with the throaty southern syllables to produce a voice that was commanding even in soft tones. "Can you show us where it happened?"
    I took a moment to understand what he meant by 'it'. I mumbled something like 'sure, come this way,' or some other expected comment. We crossed