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30
DAVID
I’m not entirely sure that I’ve heard her right at first. I can’t have. I look down at my struggling wife, see the fear on her face, and I realize that she means it.
She’s afraid of me.
She’s afraid I’m going tokillher.
I don’t even know what to say for a moment. For once, the instinct to lash out at her, to tell her that she’s overreacting, that she’s paranoid, simply isn’t there. It’s entirely true for once—but all I can think is that I can’t believe it somehow got this far. That my refusal to open up the wounds of the past led tothis.
“Amalie.” I try to speak as slowly and carefully as I can. “Wherever you think you’re going, however you thought you were getting past my security, you’re not going to now. They’re alerted by now from all the noise.”
“I don’t care!” She bucks against me again, her voice cracking and breaking with fear. My heart wrenches in my chest, seeing her like this. I never imagined I would make her so afraid. It feels like the past repeating itself all over again, and I try to loosen my grip on her wrists just enough to avoid hurting her. She feels terribly fragile to me suddenly, and I have the overwhelming urge to pick her up and hold her to my chest, to protect her from herself. From this fear that she’s whipped up until it’s become a frothing, living thing that’s on the verge of destroying us both.
“Amalie,please.” I risk letting go of one of her wrists, cupping the side of her face in my palm. It hurts to see her flinch back, her eyes widening as if she thinks I’m going to strike her. “Please, just come with me and sit down in the living room. We can talk. You have this all wrong.Please.”
I’ve never begged her for anything before. I never thought I would. I can see the realization of that in her face, the way it sinks in as she slowly stops struggling. When I see the tears glistening at the corners of her eyes, it feels like my heart is cracking open.
“Amalie,” I whisper her name, and she goes lax underneath me, nodding slowly.
I pull back, letting go of her wrist as I push myself up to my knees and give her a hand to help her up, too. She’s trembling, and I start to reach for her, but when she flinches back, I stop myself, holding my hands up to show that I’m not going to touch her.
She waits for me to step out of the doorway, and for a moment, I think she’s going to make a break for it again. But she scoops up the bag that fell onto the floor, holding it close to her as if she can’t bear to let go of it, and follows me into the closest living room.
It’s the huge, formal room—still only partially renovated, with the half-pulled apart fireplace and only one couch not covered in a drop cloth. I’m suddenly aware of all the things Amalie said about this house that I didn’t want to hear—that it doesn’t feel like a home, that it feels cold and unwelcoming, like a mausoleum to people who are gone. A house filled with ghosts.
All I’ve been able to see is what the house will become, when I’m finished with it. But I understand, looking around, how she wouldn’t be able to visualize what I always have. After all, she’s never seen it the way I did growing up here.
So much of how I’ve gone wrong bursts into clarity, all the ways I could have done this differently, and I’m so terribly afraid that it’s too late.
I don’t know what I’ll do if it is.
She sits very far from me, on the opposite end of the couch, her hands knotted together in her lap and her posture tense. I can see the wary look on her face, and I switch on the lamp on the side table, bathing the room in a soft golden glow that feels quiet and intimate. I want her to feel safe. I want her to see the sincerity on my face as I tell her what I have to say—what I hope she’ll listen to—even if it doesn’t make a difference in the end.
“I’m sorry,” I say softly. “I should have told you everything, Amalie. I never dreamed you would think—”
“How?” she asks icily, glaring at me. “How would you possibly think I wouldn’t come to that conclusion? When you wouldn’t tell me anything, when everyone tiptoes around what happened as if it’s a deadly secret, when I found their graves and Bria’s diary—you must think I’m an idiot. Now you want me to believe I have it all wrong?”
“You do,” I tell her, as calmly as I can manage. “I’m not saying I don’t have some fault in it—in what happened before, and what’s happened between us. I’m just saying that it’s not what you think it is. I should have explained it all; I see that now. And I will—if you’ll let me.”
Her lips are pressed so tightly together that the edges of her mouth look white. She nods, a small, quick motion, and she looks as if she’s poised to run at any moment. It makes my heart ache to see her like this, small and afraid, her eyes fixed on me like a terrified rabbit’s.
“I told you this was our family home,” I say quietly, keeping my voice as even and calm as I can. “The Carravella family has been living here since we came here from Sicily—there was no talk of moving out, until my mother passed away and my father got remarried. The house had started to fall into some disrepair by then, as old houses do, and she wanted nothing to do with it. She wanted to move to Boston, and my father gave in to make her happy.” I see Amalie flinch at that, and I let out a slow sigh. “I’m not saying I was right to be angry with you for hating the house because of that. I should have made an effort to see that it was different, that you were lonely and felt isolated—not just that it wasn’t ‘nice’ enough for you. I’m sorry. I truly am.”
“So they moved to Boston.” Amalie’s voice is a hushed whisper. “You didn’t even tell me she’s your stepmother. I thought she was your mother when we visited. I felt like an idiot when I found the grave and realized.”
“I’m sorry.” I spread my hands out, feeling entirely at a loss for how to make this better. “I’m going to keep saying that over and over, Amalie, while I’m telling you this story. I want you to believe that I truly am—but I understand if you don’t.”
I pause for a moment, watching her. “My brother inherited the house after my father and his new wife moved to Boston. I stayed here too, with him and his new bride. He started renovating the house almost immediately—Bria might not have loved him, but she loved the house. She thought it was beautiful, and she threw herself into helping with it. Their marriage seemed decent enough at first—she got pregnant quickly and occupied herself with the house, and my brother wasn’t particularly affectionate with her; he also wasn’t cruel. She and I were friends. I—” I take a slow breath, trying to think of how to say what I need to without Amalie misinterpreting it. “I cared about her. I didn’twanther, not like that. Lucio being married to her, the two of them having a son—it solidified my freedom. There was no need for me to get married or produce heirs; he’d taken care of all of that. But he saw it as—something else.”
“Oh.” Amalie looks at me, and I can see a glimmer of understanding in her eyes. That she’s beginning to see where this story goes.
“He got jealous. He was—possessive of her. Lucio was a difficult man. He was never particularly kind or caring with anyone, and he tried to be gentler with her at first, but once he got something into his head—it was impossible to get it out. He was stubborn, and a hard person to be around when he was angry. He got it into his head that Bria and I had something. That maybe Marcus wasn’t his at all. That maybe she’d even been with others.”
“You mean the same things you accused me of.” Amalie’s voice cuts through the conversation, sharp and angry. “You sound just like him, then, you know that? You must, hearing yourself say all of this—”
My chest tightens with a deep pang of guilt—and regret. “I do,” I say quietly. “I didn’t see it at the time, just as I’m sure he didn’t. But I see it now. I would never have done what he did, though. You have to believe that, Amalie. If you’d gotten the results that the baby was mine, I wouldn’t have questioned it.”
