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But there was no time for that now. Her children were waiting for her. Waiting for the truth.
Freddy walked her home, and she heard him talking to Russell and Avis in low tones in the sitting room. Good. At least one explanation she wouldn’t have to give herself.
Instead of joining them, she tiptoed to the guest bedroom. Rosa was already tucked in the small bed they would share, reading, as usual. But Gio, who turned to glare at her as soon as he heard the door open, paced the floor by the window. “I told her I saw Da. That you lied to us.”
And she had. Painting them a picture of their father as a heroic soldier, considering even telling them that he’d died inbattle like so many other husbands and fathers. Letting him fade out of their lives nobly instead of slinking into infamy. But that was the path he had chosen, the way he would be remembered.
“I want to know why,” Gio went on, filling the silence. “You promised.”
“I know, son. I know.” She sat on the bed and held Rosa tightly, rocking her like she was still a baby who could be soothed with a lullaby.
Maybe confronting Patrick was the easy part, and this, the truth telling, would cost her more. But it was time.
“I need to tell you both something,” she began, not sure what she would say next.
“A story?” Rosa asked sleepily. “I like stories.”
But this wasn’t one of her fairy tales, full of magic spells and hungry trolls, of curses and dragons and victorious knights.
Or maybe it was.
Wasn’t that one purpose of stories? The best ones might be about good and evil in fictional lands, but they were meant to help people recognize them in the real world. And maybe even teach them how to respond with wisdom and courage.
In the quiet, Martina thought of the best stories she had read—of Henry Higgins using his power to belittle and bully Eliza, Hercule Poirot uncovering the inevitable end of greed and deception, Jane Eyre saying to Mr. Rochester,“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.”
And then she found it, something that might make sense to them, a fragment of something true that could help them understand the father who had hurt them all.
“Do you remember,” she began, “inTreasure Island, how Long John Silver was always kind to Jim? But that didn’t make him a good or safe person....”
thirty-six
AVIS
SEPTEMBER 8
Avis’s homemaking books contained extensive notes on hospitality, but none had given advice on how to outfit one’s home for four additional overnight guests, particularly with a violent man on the loose looking for them.
She’d had to improvise—serving an after-dinner snack of graham crackers and cocoa when most around the table had picked at their dinners, trying to keep conversation light, checking the locks each time she passed the front or back door, making sure everyone was comfortable for the night.
Martina and the children had already taken the guest bedroom, and Freddy refused to leave them alone with Martina’s husband unaccounted for. He and Russell would take turns on the sofa, the other staying awake in case of any trouble.
Now Avis turned over in the dark, lying flat on the mattress, anything but tired. Just thinking about the night’s events was enough to make her shiver. A gun going off in her library! And poor Martina keeping her secret for so long. Worse than that ghastly Poe story.
A cry, muffled and sudden, pierced the quiet. For a moment, Avis wondered if she’d conjured it in her own mind with thoughts of hearts beating under floorboards, but then sherecognized Martina’s voice. She snatched her robe from the closet and threw open the door.
In the hallway, little Rosa stood with stuffed bear in hand, blinking at the switched-on lights that broke every blackout rule in the book. Martina knelt beside her. “Rosa, tell us where your brother is.”
Avis felt her heartbeat speed up involuntarily. Gio was gone? How? She’d locked the back door.
Silly. Doors were only locked from the outside.
“He made me promise not to say,” Rosa whispered, ducking into her mother’s side, as shy as she’d been at that very first book club meeting.
Her mother turned her out by the shoulders, meeting her eyes. “That is not a fair promise. We want to make sure Gio is safe. Don’t you?”
She nodded miserably.
“Then tell us where he went.”
