In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(97)

Renato cleared his throat. “I guess I should just come out with it. Are you ready to see where your mother is laid to rest?”

“Yes,” she said. “Thank you. I would love to.”

“I’ll sit this one out,” Hazlett said. “I know you’d rather be alone.”

Sveti got up, her belly fluttering. Which seemed silly. What she was about to see was static and eternally unchanging. She followed Renato off the terrace, through a flowering walled garden, then alongside a high hedge. “Is this the maze you spoke of yesterday?”

“Yes, it is,” Renato said. “I would be delighted to show it to you. Would you like to see it before, or after . . . ?” He paused delicately.

“After, please.” The tomb scared her more. It made sense to confront the bigger emotional ordeal first.

The garden gave way to fruit trees and a vineyard and, finally, an ancient marble mausoleum.

“My family has been buried here since the sixteen hundreds.” Renato unlocked the door and led her into the dim, stifling, narrow marble room. He gestured at a panel on the wall. “She’s here. Next to the place destined for me. Where I would have put my wife, if I had married. A nod toward lost dreams, romantic old fool that I am.”

Sveti stared at her mother’s name on the gleaming metal plaque affixed to the stone. She put her hand on the marble, trying to visualize her mother’s face. All she could see was the image from her dream. Her mother in the red evening gown, falling backward into the darkness.

The mute slab of stone infuriated her. She wanted to smash it.

“Do you want some privacy?” Renato asked. “I can wait outside.”

She made the decision abruptly. She wanted out of this stifling trap. There was nothing here. No answers or insights, just the maddening silence of death. “I can’t feel her here,” she said. “Could I see the maze? And the atrium? Maybe I’ll get more of a sense of her there.”

Renato’s smile was sad. “I know just how you feel. Come.”

He led her back the way they’d come, to the tall wall of topiary they had walked past before. “This maze was planned and planted in the early eighteen hundreds,” he told her. “It’s multicursal, with a central island. There’s a fountain with an ancient Greek statue of Athena in the center, and statuary at the various nodes. The hedges are two meters high, so I dare not leave you alone in it. You might never come out.” He chuckled.

She could not bring herself to smile back.

He led her through the entrance. Instantly, the high, narrow corridors made her feel stifled. There was not enough room to walk side by side unless they were uncomfortably close, shoulders touching, but when she tried to edge ahead of him, he just lengthened his stride.

She pulled the sequence of poets out of her memory and turned right at the first node, not even glancing at the statue.

“Svetlana?” Renato hurried after her. “Will you let me guide you?”

She forced herself to smile. “Just let me wander a little,” she said. “Please? I don’t need to solve it. I just want to experience it.”

He shrugged, looking vaguely troubled. “As you wish.”

Left, at the rearing horse. Left again, at the lovers. Another right, at a snarling griffin—and then left again, at a plumed soldier.

And she was facing a blank, impenetrable wall of dense green foliage. Smooth turf beneath her feet. Nowhere to go. Nothing to see.

It was a blind alley. There could be nothing here to guide or illuminate her. Not unless it was buried in the ground.

It hit her like a fist in the gut. She should be used to slamming up against blank walls by now. Tears welled up, to her horror. She did not want to blubber like a little girl in front of this man. God, please, no.

She put her hands to her face. Started silently sobbing. Shit.

Renato placed his hand on her shoulder. “Oh, my dear.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry. What was I thinking? That she would stroll around a corner and meet me here? I feel so silly.”

“Don’t, please. If only she could.” He passed her a handkerchief.

“Let’s go,” she said, snuffling into it. “May I see the atrium?”

“Certainly. Whenever you’re ready.”

Sobbing in front of him had evidently made Renato feel that he had license to touch her now. He took her arm. Good thing Sam wasn’t there. And even so, she missed him so badly.

The carved bench in the atrium was made of the same marble the mausoleum was fashioned of, gray with streaks of orange. She sat down. “This is where I’d like to have a moment alone, if you don’t mind.”

“Of course.” Renato patted her shoulder and then strode away.

Alone, at last. Sort of. Anyone could stroll by on one of the porticoed walkways that surrounded the garden. The breezeway with the loggia on the second floor also was open to the atrium, and dozens of windows looked out on it from the third floor. She could be seen by anyone looking down. But her heart fluttered, to be at the very place her mother had described. Mama had invited her to sit right here. Had asked Sveti to see something, to understand something. But what?

What, Mama? What did you want me to see? Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She ached to answer the call. Still longing for approval from someone who was dead six years. Someone who hadn’t cared enough to have her daughter come visit for Christmas. And where did that thought come from? It distorted her perceptions.