Pensieri Finali Brooklyn
Pensieri Finali
Brooklyn
Venice, Italy
Coming home again was the strangest thing. The house didn’t feel like it belonged to us anymore. There was too much violence. Too many horrible memories.
And there were still so many questions.
The FBI agent, Sheehan, had overheard too much of the conversation with Alex.
He knew about the shooting in Thiviers. I had to own up to it.
Thankfully, they had no desire to prosecute me.
I gave several statements on the record about all the things that had happened, and that was that.
Honestly, it was probably John Baldwin’s power that saved me from a jail sentence.
His organization was too covert to allow the truth to come to light.
Having an operative’s wife in jail was bound to draw unwanted attention.
Plus, it hadn’t looked great when they discovered the keystroke analysis software that was loaded on our home computers.
They were still unraveling whether any mission-critical information was accessed, if Alex found anything that compromised their other cases. The violations kept piling up.
The moment I was cleared by the police and FBI, and Trey was able to wrap up his part of the case, we gathered up our clothes and the precious items we couldn’t part with, dropped several boxes at Margot’s, and had an auction company deal with the rest. We were both still tender and healing, but we needed to get out.
The FBI had gotten us a new place, a rental condo downtown, until we could decide what we wanted to do, but we only stayed two nights.
I think we both wanted to get the hell out of Nashville.
Thanks to Trey’s brilliant move with the multiple crypto wallets and the side investments he was making, we had enough money to last a lifetime. So we started with the trip we were supposed to take, the one that Eden and Alex thwarted with their insane scheme.
Eden. She is someone I try not to think about if I can help it.
The last I heard, she was still in a coma in Nashville.
I hope she stays that way forever. I’d hoped they would turn off her life support entirely, but Trey and Theresa decided to let nature take its course.
The doctors thought she still had brain activity, so they let her be.
I hope that bitch rots in hell for what she did to my family. There are a lot of things I can forgive, but poisoning my children, my sister, and my dog is not one of them.
Trey told me as much as he could about what she’d done to Chloe.
The years of Chloe’s ill health, Eden’s faked innocence, her genius coupled with genuine mental illness.
How much of the plan to take down Trey was hers or Alex’s, we will probably never know.
While she still breathed, getting as far away from her as possible seemed the only logical thing to do.
I asked him once if he thought Alex was lying, that maybe it was Eden who killed Chloe after all. But he shook his head. “He told me things that only the killer would know, babe.”
“And you believed him?”
He shrugged. “All I know is he was a part of it. No question about it.”
Still, I wondered. I knew Alex was a cruel bastard. Capable of it, yes. And he wasn’t with me that Christmas. He’d gone home on the 24th to see family and came back to France for New Year’s Eve. So it was possible, but the timeline didn’t match perfectly.
It didn’t matter. Both of our exes were dead, both killed by violence, and we’d have to deal with that for the rest of our lives.
Once we said our goodbyes to Trey’s parents in a small ceremony in Malogen, we got the proper papers for Bohdi expedited and flew to Italy.
We took a house in Venice. Margot came with us, naturally.
She stayed until I was back on my feet and feeling more like myself.
We toured the city, took drives into the countryside.
We all loved Verona and went there several times, enjoying espresso in the piazza off the Arena, a huge Colosseum look-alike, while the kids ran in circles with other Italian children.
We took trips to the mountains, explored ruins, and went to Rome on a whim for gelato one afternoon, the train ride home lulling us all to sleep.
It was good for them to have normality. Their nightmares were easing a bit.
Mine weren’t, but that wasn’t a surprise. They never would.
After three lovely months, when Margot has to go back to the States, we all cry.
The day is fine, blue skies and calm waters.
My sister hugs Trey and the kids, and pets Bohdi’s sweet head.
She promises to FaceTime from the airplane, and says she’ll try to have the pilots join in.
As much as they’ve been through, the kids are still silly and want impossible things.
I encourage their flights of fancy. They’ve heard enough to be scarred for life, and I try to ease their pain as much as I possibly can.
I walk her to the vaporetto. My leg is still healing, but I am barely limping anymore. I am glum, and she tries to cheer me up.
“Don’t worry, Brookie. I will be back soon. Olivia loved my idea of importing more Italian textiles, so I’ll be back next month to get stock. Everywhere you travel, I’ll find new materials to add to the collection. Besides, you’re going to give me another niece or nephew to play with.”
“I am?”
“You are.” She grins. “I think you’re already cooking one up, actually.”
I touch my belly. She’s right. I’m two weeks late. At least something positive is coming out of this.
A huge crowd of tourists streams past us, and we don’t speak again until we reach the vaporetto dock. We get in line together, arms linked.
“This is going to be the first time in a long time we haven’t been together.”
“Since the kids were babies,” she replies. “But you’ve got this. They’ve already picked up so much Italian. They’ll be fluent when I come back.”
“Still. It won’t be the same without you.”
“I’m just a plane ride away, hon. I’ll call you every night.”
We embrace, and I can feel people staring. We do look so much alike.
“Thank you,” she whispers. “For not telling them. Thank you for taking the blame. Alex hurt you so badly, and you let him, to save me.”
“Your alibi is my alibi, too. If you hadn’t been waiting for me in the lobby that afternoon, if the crew hadn’t seen you, it all might be different. Thank you for helping me kill them both, sister.”
With a final squeeze, she leaps onto the vaporetto, and it chugs into the water. She waves and waves, and I wave back, tears streaming down my face. My mirror is leaving, and I know I won’t be whole until she returns again.