Every Single Secret(92)
He believed that, at our core, we were the same. When he looked at me—the abandoned girl who had lashed out once in violence—he saw himself. In the glare of his narcissism, I was nothing but a reflection of him. With me, he wouldn’t have to live his life alone. He would have someone to sympathize with his urges, to admire his handiwork, maybe even, at some point along the way, take part in it. I’ve only begun to understand it myself, but the strange truth is, in his twisted way, Heath Beck loved me.
Luca speaks. “You want me to go?”
I realize I’ve been somewhere else entirely, and I touch his hand. “No, please. I’d like it if you stayed.”
“Okay.” His eyes are so kind, so steady. “I come to say it’s safe for you now. But also to say I’m sorry for what they did to you back in Georgia. I didn’t help you.”
“But you did. You helped me get away.”
He shakes his head. “I should know something was bad at that place. My sister, she works for the doctor for many years at his retreats. She quit to go back to school, but when he calls her about a new job—just one week, really good pay—she say I should do it. She tell me I only cook for four people, and maybe he’ll help me with my citizenship, like he helps her. When I get there, Cerny say I have to deliver empty trays—breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I know it don’t sound right, but I’m scared to say no.”
I nod.
“I think if I tell police, they come after me. Or call Immigration—and I can’t go back to Brazil, it’s not a good place for me there, not anymore. My sister is new citizen, but who knows what the authorities do if Cerny say something? And then I find that locked room behind the mirror. I know something is wrong, but I don’t know what it is.” He rubs his forehead. His face looks pained.
I put my hand on his arm. “I opened a bottle of wine earlier. Would you like a drink?”
“Sure. Yes.”
We take the bottle and two glasses outside. Luca tells me to sit in the Adirondack chair and insists on cleaning up my earlier spill. When he’s done, he pulls up a chair, and I fill his glass. We talk. Well, he talks—he tells me about emigrating from Brazil two years ago, moving in with his sister and her husband into their tiny apartment in Dunfree. He’d been in med school in S?o Paulo but had gotten involved with a woman who turned out to have a husband with some seriously shady connections. After being bodily threatened by these guys—organized-crime types, he learned—he left the country.
He goes on to say that he told the police everything about his involvement with Cerny and Baskens, and recently, he’s started culinary school in Atlanta.
“And my last name is Isidoro,” he concludes.
I smile at this personal detail, glad that he wanted me to know.
“I want to say something earlier, but . . .” he says.
“What?”
He looks embarrassed. “Forget it.”
“Tell me.”
“I was going to say”—he does this kind of adorable shrug thing—“your hair . . . it looks good.”
I’m touched in an unexpected way. It’s not that spectacular, as far as compliments go, but it’s the way he’s said it. Like he was thinking it all along and only now just got up the courage.
“Yours looks good, too.”
The worst comeback in the history of haircut banter, but it’s all I’ve got. And now the words are hanging out there, and we’re just sitting in a semi-uncomfortable silence, staring at each other’s heads. After a moment or two, I realize gravity’s kicked in, and we’ve gone from staring at hair, down to eyes, then mouths. I have a moment of panic. This is the point where Daphne Amos would’ve felt a tingle. Where she would’ve gotten swept away by hormones and idiotic notions about soul mates.
But there’s no tingle or sweeping away or any of that nonsense, because I’m no longer Daphne Amos. I am Sydney Green, and she doesn’t traffic in that currency. There is something else, though, something I am feeling. It’s like the negative of a film print. The barest hint that I may, at some point, in some wild, possible future, feel something for another person again. It unsettles me, and I don’t know exactly what to do with it, but it is still there, all the same. Glimmering in and out of sight in the space between Luca and me.
I decide, before we can move forward, two things must happen. First, that diamond ring on my kitchen table must be pitched over the side of the deck and into the valley below, never to be seen again. And second . . .
“Can I tell you something?” I ask. “About my past?”
He looks a little surprised, but unguarded. “Sure. Okay.”
I take a deep breath. “I lived for a while at a home for children in south Georgia,” I begin. “In my house, there was a girl. Her name was Chantal.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is an unabashed love letter to Emily Bront?. I have often thought since we shared a first name, we must share some kind of psychic simpatico. That may or may not be true, but I still thank you, my dear, passionate Emily, for your beautiful, dark, heartrending story that helped create the gothic genre. How you continue to confound readers with the lines you blurred between love and obsession is a marvel to me.
Unending thanks go to my superstar agent, Amy Cloughley, and the rest of the team at Kimberley Cameron & Associates. Also thanks to Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle for their unwavering support of my books. Thanks also to my editors Alicia Clancy, Danielle Marshall, and Kelli Martin of Lake Union—a group effort this time, but, as always, such an affirming experience. I always know I am in the best of hands with you all.