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He pulls into the parking lot, drives up to the docks. I recognize the man who greets us. He’s the same one as yesterday.
Sebastian gets out, hands over the keys. He opens the trunk and takes out our overnight bag. When he opens my door, I just look up at him.
I can’t get out. I don’t want to. I feel my eyes filling up again because I’m scared and I don’t want to go back, and it’s worse now than before.
He sighs, tells the man to load the bag onto the boat, and crouches down. He takes one of my hands into both of his.
“I don’t want to go back there,” I say.
“We have to, Helena.”
I shake my head. “Why? You can decide. It’s up to you what happens to me.”
Not for long, though. Not for long.
My stomach turns at the thought.
“Listen to me, Helena.”
I shake my head.
“Listen. My meeting in Verona, it was good news. I’m trying—” he stops abruptly, breathes in, changes track. “You have to trust me now. What I said to you yesterday, they weren’t empty words.”
I stop.
“I have no intention of passing you on to my brothers,” he says.
“What? How? How can you stop it?”
He straightens so I have to look up at him and squint against the sun behind him.
“I can’t tell you that. Just let me handle this my way and trust me. No one will touch you. You’ll be safe.”
“How can I be safe on that island? With them?”
His forehead is creased. He reaches down, unbuckles my seat belt, and lifts me out of the car.
“Give me a few days, and we’ll talk again. Can you do that?”
“I don’t have a choice, Sebastian.”No one is around when we get back. Apart from the bustle of food being prepared in the kitchen and the gardeners working outside, it’s quiet. Sebastian has to make calls and disappears into his study. After spending an hour in my room, I decide to go outside, go for a walk.
The waning light lends a comforting backdrop to my walk. There won’t be a single cloud in the sky tonight.
I walk past the swimming pool, the filter buzzing quietly, and step onto the grass, turn toward the small farm. It’s just far enough from the house that the smell doesn’t reach it.
A dozen chickens roam free and half that number of lambs. I wonder if they slaughter them. I guess they do. Why else keep lambs? Chickens for eggs maybe, but not all of them.
I pet the two lambs grazing by the fence as I pass and walk toward the vegetable garden, weaving through the neat rows of greens. When I see the strawberry patch in the farthest corner, I bend to pick a handful of ripe ones and plop them into my mouth one after another. They’re smaller than the ones we get at home from the supermarket. Softer too, and a hundred times sweeter.
When I’ve had my fill, I wipe off my hands and turn to go back to the house. But I pause.
There’s an unkept path between the trees here, and it leads to the east side of the island. I can take the long way back to the house.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I begin to walk steadily away from the house in the direction I’m not to go. One of the places forbidden to me. I’m curious why it’s forbidden.
It’s a longer walk than I realize, but that’s partly the route I take. It’s overgrown, if it was ever maintained to begin with, and becomes more of a hike. Flip-flops aren’t the right footwear, I find out.
The foliage seems to change here too. It becomes wilder, rougher. The long branches of low bushes scratch at my legs as I walk, and I wish I’d brought a sweater. It’s cooled down a lot since the sun set.
Just when I think I should turn back the trees give way to a clearing.
I stop at the edge of the large circle of hay-like grass and look at it, the Scafoni family mausoleum.
A chilly wind blows my skirt up and steals my breath as I stand taking it in, the gray stone building older than any other on the island, large and imposing and final.
I take a step into the clearing, and it’s like I’ve stepped out of one world and into another. It’s the strangest, creepiest feeling. I hug my arms to myself, rub them, tell myself to grow up. Of course, it’s creepy. It’s full of dead bodies or ashes or dust. But the key word is dead.
These Scafoni can’t hurt me.
I force myself to walk toward the two wide stairs that lead to the large iron doors. They’re more like garden gates than doors.
When I’m closer, I realize carved in the stone over the door is the body of an angel, androgynous, one of the wings clipped by time, the other grand. He or she kneels, hands on the ground, fingers curled but soft, head bowed, giving the impression of one who is broken or grieving. One who has accepted what has come to pass.
