The colonel clears his voice, adjusts his coat, straightening his buttons and lapels, and then prepares to address the journalists. To make himself look taller on TV, he has constructed a little podium near the GeoService cabin, where he is headed when Grazia stops him.
“Colonel . . .”
“What, Marshal.”
“I wanted to let you know that the report will be my last task as commander of this station. I intend to hand in my resignation immediately after I deliver it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t think I’ve handled the job in the best way, there are things that . . .”
“Listen to me. There are always things. Our job is to do our best, Marshal. And you did. Besides, I’m having a terrible time finding men who want to move here for a job. Resignation rejected, Marshal. Expect a raise instead.”
“For what?”
“For catching on to what was happening, saving your daughter and maybe Rodari, solving the case of attorney Alberti’s disappearance and someone else we didn’t even know about, for having stopped a criminal plan from being put in place by a group of covert assassins and perhaps even saving this whole place from the clutches of a company that will soon be summoned to court to clarify their involvement in the whole mess. Marshal, you did what you were supposed to do. And with regard to the footage that led you to your conclusions . . .”
“Colonel, I . . .”
“I think we can set that aspect of the matter aside, Marshal. Resignation rejected, you can keep it along with all your things. When you’re finished with the paperwork, take a week of leave. Friguglia called out of the blue to express his wish to return to service. Some unfounded rumors may have reached him about transfers to special units against organized crime. Anyway, his health conditions have miraculously improved and so—” A sneeze interrupts him. The colonel digs around in his coat pocket. He’s looking for something. He finds it. He pulls out a chestnut. He looks at her, his contracted eyebrows suddenly severe. “Do you know what I think, Marshal? I think the only thing that can fight a cold is aspirin.” He launches the chestnut into the woods. They both watch it disappear between the trees. “So let’s get this press conference started, the spotlight awaits us.”
TWO
Giulio opens his eyes. She’s still there, close to him. She has her usual shawl on her shoulders, gathered tight at her neck, her hands gripping the thermos as she looks out the window. She doesn’t have her usual cup of tea with her, which she was forced to leave back at the Gherarda.
Outside, the sky is gray. But the last time he opened his eyes, it was sunny. He must have slept a lot. The effect of the morphine. He immediately asked how bad it was, and they told him that everything went well but that he’d be medicated for a few days so he could get through the pain. The yellowish light in the room is annoying. The bed next to him has been turned down. Maybe they were letting her sleep in his room. He had the feeling that she had been nearby when he was sleeping. They explained everything to him.
Grazia had stopped in to see him. They’d managed to save Donato. He’ll have a bad headache for a while. He and Grazia spoke alone. Comparing the footage of the attack on Patrizia with what the drones had captured, arriving to the theory that it was Maglio who killed her and then buried her, with Falconi’s help, near the GeoService cabin. They’re testing the DNA on Patrizia for a match with Maglio’s, since she had apparently tried to defend herself. Is that supposed to make him feel better? Maybe in time. But not now. Giulio is no longer a suspect, this absurd and terrible story is over, but the truth is that Patrizia was killed in a dark alley so a permit could be authorized. The gnome is right: evil lurks where you least expect it. Where you wouldn’t think to look for it, where everything seems completely normal. And yet it’s not.
“Did I sleep a lot?” Giulio asks.
She turns. In a moment her eyes tear up. She smiles at her own weakness and wipes at her tears as she approaches the bed to take his hands in hers.
“A bit. How are you now?”
“I don’t know. I think it will take a while for me to be able to tell.”
She sits in the chair next to his bed. “Now that this whole thing is over, you’ll have all the time you need.”
“And you won’t be able to sell the hotel, I imagine.”
“What?” A rainbow of emotions crosses her eyes. First, it’s almost a kind of disgust, which transforms into surprise, then guilt, and then almost relief, as if the weight of something hidden has suddenly vanished.
“He blackmailed you, didn’t he? That’s why you were about to sell the Gherarda. Falconi discovered your secret.”
She looks down, as if it were too much to look him in the eyes.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” Giulio asks. “Grazia told me how things went. You took a big risk with that second shot. Falconi was already down when you shot him again. You weren’t just trying to stop him, were you?”
“Try not to judge me,” she says, looking up, as if she had found the courage to look into his eyes. “There are a few things you still don’t know.”
“Where should we begin? The woods seem like a good starting point.”
“The woods? What do you mean, Giulio?”
“Your accomplice, Dorina. She did a great job. I saw her as I was stepping inside Falconi’s house. She was spying on him. I suppose she was there for Adele, right? Maybe she wasn’t wearing her hearing aid, as usual, so she didn’t hear the shots. She had no idea what was happening. But when she saw Viola run into the woods and Falconi chasing her with a shotgun, she called you.”
Dorina takes out her hearing aid just outside the Gherarda and stashes it in her purse. She doesn’t like people seeing her with that thing behind her ear. She can always pretend to be distracted. And anyway, she feels good, so to hell with what other people say. It’s just the damn wax that settles over her eardrum that she’ll wash out one day or another. The hearing aid is just helping her for the time being; she doesn’t even need it, which is why she doesn’t want to wear it and have people think she’s deaf.
Fortunately she always keeps a pair of snowshoes at the Gherarda so she can take the trail home, which veers into the woods but cuts a lot of time off the trip to the village. And there’s nothing better than walking on fresh snow in comfy, fur-lined boots on a sunny day.
The trail slopes slightly downhill. Nonexperts believe that going downhill is easier, but that’s not true. Uphill is a matter of breath, downhill is a matter of muscles and joints, especially the knees. So at Walker’s Reprieve, a clearing with benches and a fountain, where people usually have barbecues in the summer, she stops to rest awhile.
She sweeps snow from a bench. Her coat will get wet, but the invitation to sit is impossible to ignore. What a wonderful day. Dorina looks around. She takes a few minutes to breathe and massage her legs. How the fresh air helps. There isn’t a living soul around, aside from some cold little birds and the occasional squirrel running through the snow to its nest. She slips her hand into her handbag, moves aside her hearing aid, and fishes around for her pack of Chesterfields. She’s been sneaking them ever since she was a little girl. She’s managed to make it to sixty without anyone ever discovering her little secret. It’s been enough for her to keep mints around and wait to go back inside after she’s done. That’s the mistake that secret smokers make most often because they can’t smell the smoke on their clothes like others can. She lights one up.
The woods really are splendid. They should be ashamed of themselves for wanting to build that thing. And yet some people know no shame. They distract you with a beautiful smile while they sharpen their knives. And they do it for the sole purpose of ambushing you. Sell the Gherarda to those cretins. Blackmail people by leveraging their little secrets, their weaknesses, their sorrows. And they keep smiling. Some people deserve their comeuppance. You just have to have courage, find the right time.
After finishing her cigarette, Dorina pops a m
int into her mouth and starts walking again. But having resumed her path, she notices something. There’s a car in the trees. It would be impossible not to recognize it. Adele’s olive-green Panda four by four. What’s it doing there?
Dorina approaches the car and sees it’s not the only one parked there. Behind a row of trees there’s also the Magliarini Forestry Services pickup. But what are they doing here? They’re parked in a clearing off the county road. The classic spot where kids come to mess around. A concealed place, near a curve. And behind the curve . . . is Falconi’s house. The cursed blackmailer. Maybe she’s even blackmailing them. Go figure that Adele owns the land where the monster will rise.
Dorina wants to find out more. She leaves the trail and walks along the curve of the county road, hidden in the trees. After the bend, she reaches Falconi’s house. A beautiful stand-alone villa with a snow-covered roof. Is that Amanda’s old Ford parked in front? What on earth is going on? She’d better put in her hearing aid, which she’ll need until she can wash out that damned wax in her ear.
She puts it in her ear and turns it on as she walks, and out of the corner of her eye, she can spot a dark shape entering the woods.
“Stop, just one thing!”
It’s Falconi. He’s running out of his house with a shotgun in his hand. That bastard is chasing someone who came here in Amanda’s car.
Dorina digs around in her purse for her cell phone.
“And so she called you,” Giulio says. He reaches for the sugar water on the bedside table. She tightens the shawl around her neck, as if she suddenly feels cold. She seems to be unable to speak, still uncertain whether to admit that Giulio was right or to embark on a last desperate attempt to deny it. Giulio drinks a sip and resumes talking so she doesn’t have time to make the wrong choice. “Because if you had waited to hear the shots from the middle of the woods, as you said to the carabinieri, you wouldn’t have had time to get your rifle, load it, and have Akan drive you on the snowmobile to Falconi’s exact location. No, you followed him almost immediately, as soon as Dorina called you. The instant that crazy chase in the forest began.”
“I didn’t know about what he and Maglio had done to Patrizia. If I’d known . . .”
“He was blackmailing you. He wanted to make you sell the Gherarda, I assume, as part of his agreement with GeoService. I’m sure we’ll find out about that part soon enough, when we discover who owned the company. But nothing will come of your relationship with Falconi besides a letter of intent for a sale that never materialized. You can always say you were thinking about it but that you weren’t convinced. But I know that unless someone had blackmailed you, you never would have sold the Gherarda to anyone. And then it hit me.”
“What?”
“Falconi discovered the secret you’ve been carrying around for four years. Did you seriously think I wouldn’t have figured it out? That you could fool me like you fooled the others? Because you did fool the others, didn’t you? Didn’t you fool them, Amanda?”
She stays silent. Only her sad smile hints at an admission.
“The funny thing, Aunt Amanda, is this,” Giulio continues. “It would have been a big shock for me, don’t you think? The kind of discovery that would have left me speechless. But no. It’s a bit like accepting something I already knew. The fact is, I never understood why you took the bus that day. You’d never taken it in your life. You loved to go out for your spins in the car, even when you didn’t have to go anywhere. You even brought me with you sometimes. ‘Let’s go for a spin,’ you’d say, remember? And then one day you take a bus, and the only bus you take in your life ends up going down with a collapsed bridge. And then the photograph that disappeared. The one that shows the scar on your neck, these shawls you always wear, the ashes you carry into the woods. Did you think I didn’t see you? I was at the window when you went to spread the ashes as you always did. Amanda, the witch. The final piece fell in place when I got in the car and the keys were in the ignition. When I reversed I saw the tracks from the snow tires. But the seat was too high up for Akan. So I knew then, even before Grazia told me the drone had captured the old Ford going up and down the county road in the middle of the night. You couldn’t resist going for your spins, could you? Mom didn’t even know how to start a car. And she had terrible aim. She wouldn’t have been able to hit Falconi from a foot away. But you had no problems hitting your target. And you solved a lot of problems when you did.”
“I saved Grazia and Viola.”
“And the Gherarda, which you’d promised to sell to GeoService. You weren’t doing seasonal work. You’d closed the hotel because you were about to sell it.”
“I have to be more careful where I leave things, apparently.”
“You wanted me to find it, didn’t you? You wanted me to understand everything, to spare you having to explain. You’ve always been that way.”
“After four years I began to doubt your powers of observation.”
“Falconi made you sign it. He knew about you, somehow he knew. He was more observant than I was.”
“He knew from the beginning,” Amanda says. “He approached Barbara that horrible day as she waited for the bus and they spoke.”
“Had he already tried to make her sell?”
“Apparently. GeoService’s plan had been in the works for a while. You can imagine your mother’s response.”
“So when he realized what you were doing after the accident, he waited for you to take your sister’s place, and when it was time, when it was too late for you to turn back, he threatened to reveal your identity to everyone. So the other day you decided it might be the right opportunity to put an end to the whole story.”
“You sound like an assassin.”
“Says you.”
“I saved those two girls. Do you think I would have shot Falconi if they hadn’t been there? Do you think I would have killed someone over a contract?”
“It wasn’t a contract. It was your secret.”
“Do you think I would have killed him over that?”
“Let’s put it this way, Aunt. I don’t think you would have done it if Grazia and Viola hadn’t been there. But I think you probably couldn’t believe your luck when you saw Grazia and Viola, right there, in that situation, in need of your good aim. And then there was that second shot. Grazia says you didn’t know if Falconi had been disarmed or not, that you were in shock, that you didn’t know how to use the rifle and the second shot just happened. But my dad was a hunter, so I do know a thing or two about it. And I know that was a perfect shot. I think it almost scares you to think of it now. To the point that you need someone to remind you of who you are. But at this point you’ll have to tell me who you are yourself. Otherwise, I can’t help you. You have to tell me why you wanted to take my mother’s place, her life, to disappear inside of her, to willfully imprison yourself in such a huge secret. Why did you do all of this?”
“Do you know what they say about twins? About how one can feel it when something happens to the other? It’s all true.” Amanda takes a deep breath, as if she were preparing for a confession that had been pending for a long time. “I was cleaning artichokes that day. I had just returned from a trip to Egypt, remember? I brought you a little mummy.” She smiles. “The TV was on. I was running the knife under the water, humming, when I heard it. It was like a punch, right here, in my heart. I understood everything. I dropped the knife and looked for a chair because I couldn’t stand. Barbara was dead. I knew it. An abyss opened at my feet. I felt like I was falling. I stayed frozen for hours. I was terrified. I thought if I didn’t move, I could somehow stop time and prevent the nightmare from happening. I could hardly breathe. Then the phone call. The carabinieri. I didn’t understand it right then and there, because I was so out of my head. But apparently they thought Amanda was the one who had died. Your mother and I had the same purse. We didn’t do it on purpose, but that kind of thing always happens to twins. Or at least it did with us. And that morning she had taken my bag.
So when they recovered her body and read her papers, they thought I was dead. It’s hard to explain, but when that guy on the phone called me Barbara, it was as if she wasn’t dead. As if I could choose not to accept it. As if I could keep her with me for a while. But the really amazing thing happened later. All those people, thinking I was her, made me feel so close that I didn’t have the courage to admit the truth. I know it’s probably hard for you to understand. But over the next few days, I realized that all these people needed Barbara as much as I did. The owner of the Gherarda. When we heard about the waste plant, everyone came here to ask me for advice. They never would have asked Amanda, the witch. Amanda, the globe-trotter. Amanda, the unreliable one. This place . . . everyone, we all needed Barbara.”
“And Dorina . . .”
“I needed an ally. Especially after Falconi blackmailed me into selling the Gherarda. She didn’t flinch when I told her. I suspect she already knew. But what we were defending—the Gherarda, the woods—were precious, too important to go back on. She helped me understand things about my sister that maybe I didn’t even know. And so, over the years, I’ve been a bit of her and a bit of me. I didn’t have to get rid of Amanda entirely, in the end. Good aim, a certain knack for Buraco, and a good relationship with the three cats that have watched over the Gherarda like brave guardians. But it was Barbara that everyone wanted, always. It was the first time I felt like that. After a lifetime, I became the good sister, the one they all loved, and so I left the other me behind, the person who had only been able to entertain a little boy with her stories about gnomes and magical forests.”
The Hawthorne Season Page 22