44. Vivi
VIVI
“Millie?” Her name is a ghost in my throat. “You can’t be. Millie is dead.”
Francesca sits on the upholstered vanity stool, one arm propped on the dressing table as she casually dusts a makeup brush across her cheeks. “Technically, I was dead for sixty-three seconds before the paramedics got my heart beating again.”
The grin she flashes in the mirror is a pale echo of the one I remember from childhood. “It was a temporary glitch. Obviously, I’m very much alive.”
“But, but—how? How are you here?”
Francesca rolls her eyes. “Come on, Vivi. How do these things usually happen? My mother was dead. Your parents made arrangements. I was sent to an orphanage in Italy. I was adopted. Given a new family, a new name, a new life.” She spins on the stool so she’s facing me.
Crosses one leg over the other like we’re sitting down to afternoon tea.
“Not, however, a new set of fears. No, those stayed the same. Convenient, I guess. At least I knew what I was getting into.”
“I don’t understand.”
Irritation flashes. “Clearly. Not that you would. It’s not the kind of stuff that happens in a convent.” She turns back to the mirror, smoothing down perfectly sleek hair. “Without getting too graphic about it, let’s just say my adopted brother struggled with boundaries. Was deaf to the word no.”
She opens a tube of lipstick, drags it across her lips.
“I got my first taste of that reality when I lived in your house in Chicago, when I had to pretend I didn’t hear your father forcing himself on my mother in the middle of the night.
The lessons become much more…explicit when I moved in with the Pazzis.
My bedroom located so conveniently next door to Matteo’s… ”
Francesca trails off, mind captured in the past. “And to think, I spent so much time swearing I’d never be like my mother, that I’d never let a man hurt me like that.
I always thought she was so weak around your father.
That she should’ve fought harder. Now I know there are some things you can’t stop, no matter how hard you fight. ”
“Oh, Francesca…”
“No!” She snaps, whirling on me. “Don’t you dare pity me. I don’t want to fucking hear it. Not when all of this is your fault.”
I flinch, the guilt from ten years ago boiling up from where I’ve tried to bury it for too long. I can feel it blocking my airwaves, starving me of oxygen. I look at Francesca, heart breaking for us both. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”
Francesca cocks her head, considering. “Are you?”
Tears hit my cheeks, my lips. I nod.
“For what, Vivi? Tell me, exactly.” Francesca stands. Takes a measured step toward me. Then another. “What are you so sorry for?”
At her question, all the things my mother shouted at me that morning return with a vengeance. That I should’ve minded my own business.
That I shouldn’t have been sneaking around.
That I should’ve just done what I was told.
Kept quiet. Not caused a fuss. Been invisible.
I reach for Francesca’s arm. She avoids me, my fingers landing on empty air. “I swear, I was just trying to help, Millie.”
Her name slips out so easily and, for a split second, I completely forget the reality of where I am and what’s happening.
The little girl inside me jumps to life, giddy with excitement to see her best friend again.
To talk to her best friend again, the one she thought she’d lost forever.
Two little girls, brought back from the dead.
Except, there’s no joy here. No homecoming or reunion. Francesca is looking at me with unadulterated hatred, and I know I’ve made a mistake.
“Never say that name,” she hisses, pressing forward so fast I have to scramble backward to avoid getting trampled. I come to a stop against the windows. The panes are closed. It’s the only reason I don’t fall out.
“Millie is dead.” Francesca’s voice breaks, devastation ripping through her controlled veneer. “Just like Ana. We’ll never be those girls again. I’ll never see my mother again. You and your family saw to that.”
She’s right. We can’t go back. We’ll never be those versions of our younger selves, smiling and sand-speckled as we crashed through waves and hunted for treasures on the beach.
I fist the two tiny rocks in my hand, mourning the versions of ourselves that we lost long ago.
“You’re right,” I whisper. “We can’t go back.
I can’t undo what my father did, what I saw, or what my mother did when I told her.
Anymore than I can undo what Matteo did to you, or what life in the convent did to me.
We can’t go back, Francesca.” I form her name carefully, intentionally. “But we can try to move on.”
Her face blanks.
Then she laughs. It’s high-pitched, too loud. Razor sharp. She’s wiping tears, manic giggles spilling into her voice. “Can we, Vivi? Really? Because I’d love to move on. In fact, I thought I fucking had!”
The morbid humor drops from her face, nothing left but rage. She jabs a finger into my collarbone. “I had a life here, you bitch. Gio. Aurora. This house. An actual home where I felt safe and cared for. This island was my fresh start until you came and ruined it.”
The way she says it is a hard knock to the head, jarring me to my senses. To my own reality. “Until I came and ruined it?!”
Anger rampages through me, demolishing what’s left of the internal wiring my parents and the nuns worked so hard to put in place. I’m done being pushed around, being blamed for things outside my control.
I drop the rocks to the ground, shoving her back with both hands.
She lurches, doesn’t fall.
Still, it’s the opening I need. I squirm away from the window. “I didn’t come here, Francesca. I was brought. Stollen. By a perfect fucking stranger!”
Everything I was feeling downstairs during Gio’s confession returns, intensified. The secrets, the manipulation, the isolation. I feel it coursing through me, sending my atoms into such chaos it’s a miracle I don’t disintegrate.
“I know I fucked up,” I say. “Your mom told me to keep it a secret. I didn’t.
Everything changed for the worse. I get it.
But I was also a kid. A fucking child. We both were.
And kids are supposed to be able to trust their parents.
Maybe I should’ve kept my mouth shut, not talked to my mom.
But she is the one who ruined everything.
She and my father. They’re the ones who sent you away, not me.
They’re the reason you were in that van when the car ran the red light.
They’re the reason I thought you were dead! ”
My chest heaves, thick strands of hair caught around my arms as I wave them about. “I’m sorry for my part in everything, Francesca, truly. But this, now? Me being on this island? That’s not my fault any more than the rest of it. I didn’t come here to destroy your life.”
The catharsis of getting it all out, of standing up for myself, is short-lived.
It hasn’t softened Francesca. In fact, she looks angrier than before. “It might not be your fault that you’re here, Vivi, but it’s definitely your fault that Gio is in love with you.”
Her comment knocks the wind out of me. My shoulders fall, my energy skydiving.
He doesn’t love me. The words are on the tip of my tongue. A protest that will only make this situation worse. Because it’s a lie.
I know it is.
He loves me. Not Francesca.
I’m his wife. She never will be.
And that’s when I realize that Francesca never came here to say goodbye. Not to me, not in that way.
She came here to get rid of me. To remove the one thing standing in the way of what she wants most.
She’s glaring at me with so much rage, it all starts to make terrible, horrible sense.
“It was you,” I say. “You’re the one who helped Tino escape.”