“Shh.” I glance both ways, and we cross the hall and walk a little farther to get to another door. It’s darker in here. I use the flashlight on my phone to guide us through the stored props.
She’s slow because she’s looking at everything.
We reach the curtained-off stairs. I push them aside and point. “This way.”
She peeks up the narrow, stone staircase. “What’s up there?”
“You’ll see.”
Her sense of adventure outweighs whatever it is she’s upset about. She climbs the stairs, hands on either stone wall. At the top, there’s another door. I reach over her to push it open. It sticks a little but eventually gives and a moment later, we’re outside, in a small area that’s a sort of balcony from where we can see the whole of the colosseum.
“Wow. Are we supposed to be here?” She looks down, up, at everything around her.
“No, probably not.”
She turns to me. “How do you know about it?”
“My dad used to bring us here when we were little. We’d come to three operas a week some summers. It got a little dull, so Ethan, Gregory, and I would explore.”
“They just let you explore? Here?”
“They didn’t know exactly where we were.”
The orchestra signals the Second Act is about to begin, and it seems to remind Helena of her annoyance. I see it on her face.
“What happened between dinner and this?”
She turns to me. “Nothing.”
“Something.”
She studies me, and I wait.
“What were you doing in that room with Alexa 2.0?”
I’m confused. Although the Alexa 2.0 is funny. “Were you spying?”
“No. I was upstairs on the balcony. I saw her come out of a room, and you followed soon after. She was adjusting her dress like her boob fell out, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it did, considering.” She rolls her eyes and purposefully turns her gaze to the stage.
“You sound jealous, Helena.”
She snorts. “You didn’t have to take me to the party. You could have left me at the hotel.”
“So you could run off to the train station again?”
She gives me a glare.
I get behind her, push her hair over her shoulder, and put my hands beside hers on the stone wall. I kiss her neck, the curve of her shoulder, the first welt on her back.
“Stop.”
I slide one hand inside the triangle covering her breast and the other between her legs.
“Alexa 2.0 is like a piece of birthday cake.”
I’m rubbing her pussy, kissing another line of red. She turns her head.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s nice to look at. Maybe makes your mouth water.”
She shoves at my forearm. “Then you should go have a slice.”
“That’s the point. Everyone can have a slice. Everyone has.”
“Have you?”
“A long time ago.” I pull my hand from her breast and make her look at me when she turns away. “And I don’t want seconds.” I kiss her. Her mouth opens, and her pussy is wet in my hand. “You’re what I want. This mouth, this pussy. You.”
The orchestra begins to play as Margarita comes on the stage, singing her woeful song.
Helena turns and puts her hands on the wall.
I draw her hips back, nudge her legs wide with my own, and the dress splits in two, exposing her to me.
I take a minute, stand back and admire her, pull her hips farther so she’s bent over, and I look at her like this, waiting for me, open for me. I want her. I want her like I’ve never wanted anything else in my life.
One hand on her hip, I hold her open as I undo my belt, unzip my pants, shove them and my briefs down. I slide into her pussy as I push her long hair off her back.
The raised lines beneath my fingers makes me harder. I close my hand around the back of her neck and hold her with one hand while with the other, I keep her ass spread open so I can see her, watch her pussy stretch to take me, see the tiny ring of her asshole.
I want all of her, her pussy, her ass, her mouth. I want to fill every hole at once.
She arches her back as I thrust into her, and the sounds of our fucking, of wet pussy swallowing up hard cock, of moans and groans and skin slapping against skin rival that of the soprano. When she fists her hands and I feel her squeeze me, throb around me, I come too, filling her up, squeezing the back of her neck, digging my fingers into her hip.
More bruises, my marks on her, only mine.
When I pull out, I watch cum drip out of her, drip onto the floor. I turn her to me and kiss her mouth as she wraps her arms around my neck, fingers in my hair, nails digging into the skin of my scalp.
“You’re mine, Helena,” I say between kisses. “You’re what I want.”
19
Helena
The drive back late the following afternoon is quiet. The sun is shining bright, so opposite the sheets of rain the day before.
I feel him glance at me, and I wonder what he sees. I wonder if things will change now.
I touch the ring on my finger, turn it a little, so the skull face is staring at me.
“What is that ring?”
He pays attention to everything. “My aunt gave it to me after the reaping.” I can’t help the accusatory tone in that last word.
“My Aunt Helena.”
He nods, looks straight ahead.
“Did you decide if I can call her?”
He won’t look at me when he replies. “Let’s talk about it later.”
“This is later, Sebastian.”
Nothing.
“She gave it to me to remind me that not every Willow Girl dies,” I say, unable to help myself. Unable to help that familiar darkness from creeping into my words.
We’re nearing the docks. We’ll be back on the island soon.
“I miss her.”
“She lived with you, right?”
“Yes. I’d sometimes catch her and my mom in these top-secret meetings. I called them that because they were so strange about it. I realize now my aunt must have known about the money that would change hands when the next one of us was claimed.”
By the time that day came, I felt like she hated my mother. I didn’t know why, not then.
“I overheard them once. It was on our sixteenth birthday. I’d gone to my aunt’s room to call her down for the celebration. She was out of her chair. She could walk, but she was so old, it was easier for her in the chair. But she was up on her feet, and my mom was sitting on the edge of her bed. They were arguing more loudly than usual, and my aunt did something I’d never expect from her. She slapped my mother’s face, and I can still remember the sound of it and her exact words: “You saw what they did to your sister and you’ll put your babies on those blocks? And for what? You make me sick.”
There’s more that I don’t tell him. How my aunt had told my mom it should have been her. That Libby wouldn’t have done this. She would have chosen differently.
They had argued then, and my mom forbade her from coming to the birthday celebration. She locked her in her room like she was a child.
When I took Aunt Helena a piece of birthday cake later, she lied to me, told me she hadn’t felt well enough to come. I think it was the only time she lied to me.
I take a long breath in. “Please let me call her today.” I’m not above begging, not anymore. “You can be in the room. What are you afraid I’ll say? I just want to talk to her, tell her I’m okay. Hear her voice.”
What would my aunt think if I told her the truth? That I was starting to have feelings for my Scafoni master. Would she slap my face too?
He pulls into the parking lot, drives up to the docks. I recognize the man who greets us. He’s the same one as yesterday.
Sebastian gets out, hands over the keys. He opens the trunk and takes out our overnight bag. When he opens my door, I just look up at him.
I can’t get out. I
don’t want to. I feel my eyes filling up again because I’m scared and I don’t want to go back, and it’s worse now than before.
He sighs, tells the man to load the bag onto the boat, and crouches down. He takes one of my hands into both of his.
“I don’t want to go back there,” I say.
“We have to, Helena.”
I shake my head. “Why? You can decide. It’s up to you what happens to me.”
Not for long, though. Not for long.
My stomach turns at the thought.
“Listen to me, Helena.”
I shake my head.
“Listen. My meeting in Verona, it was good news. I’m trying—” he stops abruptly, breathes in, changes track. “You have to trust me now. What I said to you yesterday, they weren’t empty words.”
I stop.
“I have no intention of passing you on to my brothers,” he says.
“What? How? How can you stop it?”
He straightens so I have to look up at him and squint against the sun behind him.
“I can’t tell you that. Just let me handle this my way and trust me. No one will touch you. You’ll be safe.”
“How can I be safe on that island? With them?”
His forehead is creased. He reaches down, unbuckles my seat belt, and lifts me out of the car.
“Give me a few days, and we’ll talk again. Can you do that?”
“I don’t have a choice, Sebastian.”
No one is around when we get back. Apart from the bustle of food being prepared in the kitchen and the gardeners working outside, it’s quiet. Sebastian has to make calls and disappears into his study. After spending an hour in my room, I decide to go outside, go for a walk.
The waning light lends a comforting backdrop to my walk. There won’t be a single cloud in the sky tonight.
I walk past the swimming pool, the filter buzzing quietly, and step onto the grass, turn toward the small farm. It’s just far enough from the house that the smell doesn’t reach it.
A dozen chickens roam free and half that number of lambs. I wonder if they slaughter them. I guess they do. Why else keep lambs? Chickens for eggs maybe, but not all of them.
I pet the two lambs grazing by the fence as I pass and walk toward the vegetable garden, weaving through the neat rows of greens. When I see the strawberry patch in the farthest corner, I bend to pick a handful of ripe ones and plop them into my mouth one after another. They’re smaller than the ones we get at home from the supermarket. Softer too, and a hundred times sweeter.
When I’ve had my fill, I wipe off my hands and turn to go back to the house. But I pause.
There’s an unkept path between the trees here, and it leads to the east side of the island. I can take the long way back to the house.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I begin to walk steadily away from the house in the direction I’m not to go. One of the places forbidden to me. I’m curious why it’s forbidden.
It’s a longer walk than I realize, but that’s partly the route I take. It’s overgrown, if it was ever maintained to begin with, and becomes more of a hike. Flip-flops aren’t the right footwear, I find out.
The foliage seems to change here too. It becomes wilder, rougher. The long branches of low bushes scratch at my legs as I walk, and I wish I’d brought a sweater. It’s cooled down a lot since the sun set.
Just when I think I should turn back the trees give way to a clearing.
I stop at the edge of the large circle of hay-like grass and look at it, the Scafoni family mausoleum.
A chilly wind blows my skirt up and steals my breath as I stand taking it in, the gray stone building older than any other on the island, large and imposing and final.
I take a step into the clearing, and it’s like I’ve stepped out of one world and into another. It’s the strangest, creepiest feeling. I hug my arms to myself, rub them, tell myself to grow up. Of course, it’s creepy. It’s full of dead bodies or ashes or dust. But the key word is dead.
These Scafoni can’t hurt me.
I force myself to walk toward the two wide stairs that lead to the large iron doors. They’re more like garden gates than doors.
When I’m closer, I realize carved in the stone over the door is the body of an angel, androgynous, one of the wings clipped by time, the other grand. He or she kneels, hands on the ground, fingers curled but soft, head bowed, giving the impression of one who is broken or grieving. One who has accepted what has come to pass.
But then, when I get closer, I can see that beneath the thick strand of stone hair, the angel’s face is just visible enough, and one eye looks straight out at me. It’s a Watcher, standing guard over the Scafoni remains, not passive at all, but fierce.
And she knows I don’t belong here.
It almost makes me stop. Almost.
But I steel my spine and reach out to brush the tips of my fingers against the gritty iron of the gate. It’s slightly a jar, not quite closed, and I push.
It’s so quiet here that the creak sounds a hundred times louder than it is. If I’d thought it was chilly outside, it’s doubly so inside. A hanging lantern shines a red light over the space, illuminating the room just enough to let me see. A breeze blows, and something tickles my toes, making me gasp and jump until I realize it’s just a dead leaf blown out of its resting place by the wind.
All around me, Scafoni names are carved in stone, dates beneath them. Birth and death. Iron candle holders, like long fingers, protrude from beside each name. Some have stubs of candles, some are filled with dirt. I read some of the names, the oldest ones. Hundreds of years old.
When I come upon Anabelle’s, I stop. I reach out and touch the engraving.
Hers is one of the forgotten graves. And beside her is her son, Giuseppe.
His last name is listed as Scafoni-Willow.
I’m surprised at it. Surprised they’d not banish the name from this final resting place of the Scafoni family because they can’t want to remember us in death.
Although the Willow part of the name seems to be vandalized, like someone took a jagged stone and scratched it through a hundred times, but it’s still there. Still among the Scafoni dead, hanging like a shadow over them even in death.
I reach out to touch it, trace the letters of my name.
Do I believe the story Sebastian told me about Anabelle? He could have lied. What’s to prevent him from lying? Painting us in the worst possible light?
I drop my hand, cross to the newer stones. I find Joshua Scafoni’s marker. Sebastian’s father. The man who chose my Aunt Libby to be his Willow Girl. Beside it, I expect to find his mother, and I do see her, but there’s one name between them. Timothy Scafoni.
Confused, I read the date. The child lived three days. I do the math. Do it again. It can’t be.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
The voice makes me jump and I spin around, clutching my heart.
They sound so much alike, Gregory and Sebastian. You’d almost mistake the one for the other.
Not me, though. Gregory’s voice carries a hint of malice in it. It’s just a hint, but I hear it.
“You don’t belong here, Willow Girl.”
I swallow. I’d step back, but I’m already backed up against the stone grave wall, and the iron candle holders are digging into my back.
He takes a step toward me, looks just beyond me, comes close enough to touch me. But he doesn’t.
“I got lost.”
I can’t move when he turns to me, when he’s so close I can feel the heat of his body and all I see are his eyes and the way they watched me that night.
“I don’t believe that,” he says, his voice quiet. Almost gentle. Not quite, though. It’s missing something to be gentle.
I wonder why he’s wearing a suit and remember how, before he took me down from the whipping post, he took off his jacket and wrapped it around my shoulders. A small kindness.
I meet his eyes, but I can’t read him.
“I’ll go,” I say.
“Did you do the math?” he asks, reaching for a candle and taking a lighter out of his pocket to light it.
My legs seem finally able to function again. I take a step away and watch him drip wax onto the stub of a candle in the holder at his father’s marker, then push his candle into it, uniting the two.
He turns to me. “Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Sebastian’s not firstborn.”
“Twins.”
Gregory nods. “Timothy was first. Only survived days, though.” He glances at Sebastian’s mother’s marker. “Killed her too, two years later.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sebastian didn’t tell you?”
I shake my head.
“His mother committed suicide. In here.”
I glance at the marker, read the date of her death, the month, the day. It’s the day her sons were born, just two years later. She killed herself on Sebastian’s birthday.
Gregory steps toward me and again, I’m locked in place. Trapped.
“Still not scared of me?”
I shake my head quickly. Too quickly.
“What do you think he’ll do when you learns you were in here?”
“Are you going to tell him?”
“I don’t know.” He slides his gaze over me. I’m wearing a T-shirt to cover the marks on my back, and a skirt. His eyes settle at my thighs for a minute, then a little higher. When he returns his gaze to mine, he cocks his head to the side. “He’ll be mad. Pissed enough to use the whipping post for what it’s meant for.”
I swallow.
Gregory suddenly smiles, and his whole expression changes. It’s disarming.
And calculated.
“The fact that he’s not technically firstborn means he’s not really head of the family. That role goes to the son who takes it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could want my own Willow Girl. Seems like fun.”
“You’re sick, you know that? Perverted”
“Maybe. Probably,” he adds, as if agreeing after a moment’s thought. “Still.” He reaches out to touch my face, and I bat his hand away. “I liked watching you come.”
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