Chapter Twelve #2
I also have a room filled with clothes someone else bought and furniture that belongs to a family I barely know. I have a place at their table, but only for as long as they continue offering it.
For now.
I sit up and turn on the lamp.
My mother used to make braciole with raisins.
I haven’t thought about that in years.
At first, I remembered everything about her: the sound of her voice, the perfume she wore, and the way she sang when she brushed my hair.
Over time, the memories lost their edges. Now most of what remains comes in pieces.
A hand holding mine.
A song without words.
Tomato sauce and raisins.
I climb out of bed and pull on a robe.
The hallway is empty. Small lamps cast pools of warm light along the carpet, but most of the house has gone dark.
I head downstairs.
I tell myself I’m going to the kitchen for water.
Instead, I find myself outside Marco’s office.
A line of light glows beneath the door.
Marco is still awake.
The door is partly open, and light spills into the hallway.
Marco sits behind his desk with his jacket removed and his sleeves rolled to his elbows. Several files lie open before him.
A green-shaded lamp illuminates the papers, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. The windows behind him have become black mirrors reflecting the shelves and the solitary figure at the desk.
I’m beginning to think Angela is right about him forgetting to sleep as often as he forgets to eat.
A photograph sits on top of the nearest file.
My mother looks back at me.
Marco notices me in the doorway.
“Can’t sleep?”
“No.”
He closes the file in front of him, but he doesn’t cover the photograph.
“What are you doing?”
“Working.”
“At midnight?”
He glances at his watch.
“It’s only eleven thirty.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“So I’m told.”
I step into the office.
The photograph seems to pull me across the room.
My mother is standing outside a restaurant. Her dark hair lifts in the wind, and she’s laughing at someone beyond the edge of the frame.
I’ve never seen the picture before.
I’ve never seen her look like that—happy, young, and alive.
She isn’t posing for the camera. One hand is raised as though she has been interrupted in the middle of a story, and the wind has blown strands of hair across her cheek.
I reach toward it, then stop.
“May I?”
Marco slides it across the desk.
I pick it up carefully.
“Where did you get this?”
“It was among my father’s things.”
“Did he know her?”
“Yes.”
“How well?”
“I don’t know.”
I look up.
“You’ve been investigating me for six months, but you don’t know?”
“My father died without leaving an organized account of every person he knew.”
“That was very inconsiderate of him.”
The joke feels wrong as soon as it leaves my mouth.
Marco stares at me.
Then one corner of his mouth lifts.
“Extremely.”
I look at my mother again.
“I don’t have any photographs of her.”
“You can keep it.”
My fingers tighten around the edges.
“It belongs to you.”
“It’s a copy.”
I examine the glossy surface.
“You made copies?”
“I make copies of everything relevant.”
“Of course you do.”
He leans back in his chair.
I hold the photograph against my chest.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Silence settles between us.
It isn’t like the silence during breakfast. That silence felt easy.
This one is crowded with questions.
I look at the files spread across his desk.
“Are those about me?”
“Some of them.”
“I want to see them.”
Marco’s hand comes to rest on the nearest folder.
“All of them,” I add.
“There isn’t much.”
“Then it shouldn’t take long.”
“Lucia.”
“You know things about my life that I don’t.”
He says nothing.
“You’ve read my birth records. You know when my mother married Alexei. You know enough to tell me the man I believed was my father probably wasn’t.”
“I told you because it was relevant.”
“It’s relevant to me.”
His jaw tightens.
I think of Angela’s words.
Too much to say.
Not trusting himself to say any of it.
“I don’t want you deciding which parts I’m prepared to know.”
“I’m not.”
“Aren’t you?”
Marco gathers the files into a single stack.
“Tomorrow morning.”
“Why not now?”
“Because it’s nearly midnight and you haven’t slept.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No.”
He squares the stack against the desk.
“Which is why I’m not refusing.”
I study him.
“You’ll show me everything?”
“Names. Dates. Photographs. Everything I have.”
“Even the things you think will upset me?”
“Especially those.”
I search his expression for a condition.
“What do you want in return?”
“Nothing.”
Marco comes around the desk.
For one moment, I think he might touch me.
He stops several feet away instead and opens the office door wider.
“Try to sleep.”
“That sounded like an order.”
“It was a suggestion.”
“You need practice.”
“Apparently.”
I step into the hallway, still holding my mother’s photograph.
“Marco?”
“Yes?”
“If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to leave, would you let me?”
The question changes something in his face. The guarded stillness disappears, replaced by an alertness that makes his eyes appear greener.
He doesn’t answer immediately.
My fingers tighten around the photograph.
“Where would you go?”
“I don’t know.”
“I could arrange another hotel. An apartment. Transportation out of the city.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
His gaze holds mine.
“Yes, I’d let you leave.”
“You’d let me walk out the front gate?”
“I’d strongly advise against walking.”
Despite myself, I smile.
“And if I refused the car?”
“I would open the gate.”
“Even if you thought I was making a mistake?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because it would be your mistake to make.”
For a moment, I can’t speak.
“Good night, Lucia.”
“Good night.”
I return upstairs.
Inside my room, I close the door and turn the lock. Then I place my mother’s photograph on the nightstand, angling it toward the bed.
Viktor spent six years telling me his walls were there to keep me safe.
Marco has surrounded this house with armed men. There are cameras, gates, and guards I rarely see but know are present.
The difference is that if I asked Marco to open the gate, he would.
I believe him.
That may be the most dangerous thing about him.