Lance’s throat went dry. No … He shot a look at Nonna, whose gaze was fiercely set.
“Read …” she breathed.
“I’ve been away from the Bureau so long, not even a cop for years. I had almost forgotten how it was to sleep with half my mind awake for any sound, any shift in the air. I’m an old man. I could die tomorrow. My thoughts are only for you.
“I kept my work secret, because to reveal any part would have opened your mind to questions, to what had really happened in Sonoma. I could not face your hurt. But when the phone call came this morning, I knew I’d been wrong to keep it from you.”
Phone call? What phone call?
“How will you understand now, what I have to do?”
His throat closed. Nonno couldn’t be saying what it seemed. “L … ance.” Nonna touched his arm.
“Antonia, those I love live under one roof, and as the caller explained, what a tragedy it would be if something destroyed that building and all of you within. I value nothing so much as the family I’d thought never to have until a promise opened my eyes. A family that will continue when I’m gone. So you see, cara, I have one final role to play.”
Her hand seized hold. He wanted to stop, but her grip compelled him.
“I’ve spent my life recognizing the evil that kills the innocent. I have imitated and opposed it. Today I go to meet it. For nothing stops evil except personal sacrifice. Know, dearest, that my time with you has been more than I ever expected. La mia vita ed il mio amore.”
Nonna cried out, meeting his eyes in an agony of realization. She hadn’t seen it coming. Neither of them had. Nonno Marco’s death was no accident. The knowledge sank into his bowels. An evil that kills the innocent. From the grave Nonno had named it: Vendetta.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
What cruel ache in spleen and bone.
What breaking heart that weeps alone.
Nonno Quillan stays beside Nonna Carina until they put her body into the ground, his wrenching vigil a testament to his love. In my own childish grief I can hardly stand to see it. If that is love, how can anyone bear it?
Nonno takes my hand. “Nothing precious comes cheaply, Antonia. You must count the cost and choose… .” Count and choose… .
But how could she count what she didn’t know? How could she choose when God wasn’t just. He wasn’t … just. Wasn’t … She spiraled down. Marco. She hadn’t known; how could she know? Oh, Marco … Killed like Papa. Killed. The weight of it crushed the breath from her lungs, the life from her spirit.
She had no strength for anger. No strength for anything. She stared at the wall, wishing she could climb back into the womb … or the tomb.
Marco …
Leery of God, she had put her trust in flesh, and he had sacrificed it on his altar of duty. For her, yes, and their children’s children. Oh, the pain, the debt. Count the cost. Had Marco counted?
Deeper now, where it didn’t hurt. No, even there pain found her. Where could she hide? The cost was too high. Too high.
————
“Nonna?” After crying out, she had withdrawn into a place he couldn’t penetrate. It looked different from a stroke, but what did he know? “Nonna, talk to me!” No response. “Nonna.” Panic choked him. She had wanted this kept between them, but it was way past that now. He grabbed the letter and went downstairs.
At the door, Momma saw his alarm and matched it. “What is it? What’s happened?”
“Go check on Nonna. She might need a doctor.”
Momma slapped her cheeks. “Gesu`, Maria, e Giuseppe.”
“I gotta see Pop.”
She all but shoved him in where Pop sat watching TV. “Turn it off. Lance has something to say.” Then she rushed out.
Pop thumbed the TV off with the remote and waited.
He hadn’t thought until Pop looked up how it would be to tell him Nonno was murdered. Their one conversation hardly compared to the weeks Lance had searched piece by piece into the past, only now learning it all. And he hadn’t guessed, hadn’t known how it would hurt. How would Pop take it cold?
“You gonna talk or what?”
“Pop …”
But then Bobby and Monica barged in and Lucy and Lou with his cousin Martin from Jersey, all of them yammering, “What’s happened? What’s the fuss?” Momma must have spread the alarm.
Lance slipped the letter behind him, unwilling to toss its news to the wind. “Nonna’s not doing too well.” And it was more than he should have expected to talk it out alone with Pop.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“Is it a stroke?”
“Did someone call an ambulance?”
Pop raised his hands. “Momma’s with her. Now everybody get out.” He fixed a glance on Lance that rooted him to the floor, and when the room had cleared, it seemed to echo around them.
Lance wished he hadn’t left Nonna’s side. But Momma would take care of her, and Pop had a right to know. Though Nonna hadn’t seen it that way, as Marco’s only son, shouldn’t he decide what to do?
He jutted his chin. “Whatchu got?”
Lance handed him the letter. “From Nonno. He left it for Nonna in a safe deposit box, only, you know how she is with banks; she never picked it up unto now.”
Pop didn’t seem sure what to do with it. Lance told him, “You need to know what it says.” He’d already told him the Sonoma part of the story, but as Pop perused the first paragraphs, Lance said, “Nonno was murdered.”
His father’s jaw dropped as he looked up. “Whatchu talkin’ about?”
“It’s all in the letter. He’s telling Nonna good-bye.” He’d gone to meet the threat with intention and finality.
Pop frowned back down at the pages he held.
Lance forked his fingers into his hair. “It’s the whole story, what I told you and more. Marco was a Fed and, Pop, it wasn’t an accident.”
His father’s throat worked as he read through the first page, then the next and the next. Lance dropped to the footstool. Only then did it start to sink in. Nonno murdered. An old man. A grandpa. Why? His spine quivered as the hurt and confusion converted to anger.
Nonno, Vittorio, Quillan—Tony. It was too much. How could anyone take it sitting down? He clenched his hands, willing Pop through the pages, even though each paragraph brought him closer to the end, to the place of no return.
His throat tightened when Pop swiped a knuckle under his eye. Lance hadn’t seen him cry since Tony. He should have prepared him somehow, not sprung it. He chewed his lip. Maybe he could have done it better, but however it came out, the message was the same. Nonno had sacrificed himself for them.
“What do we do?” Lance almost whispered.
Pop had reached the end but stared at the pages still, his jaw clenching and releasing. “Do?”
“About this.” Lance slapped the pages with the back of his fingers.
“Nothing.” Pop’s voice grated.
“Pop, it’s … true; it’s gotta be. Nonno wouldn’t make it up, wouldn’t leave it for Nonna to read if it wasn’t all true. He locked it in a safe deposit box. It’s not a hoax.”
Pop’s head pivoted side to side. Lance could only imagine the emotions assaulting him. He’d lost his son to violence. Now Nonno too.
“Pop.”
“Leave it alone.” His voice was a graveyard, full of dead hopes.
That wasn’t what he’d expected. Anger. Grief. Not this defeatist … “You know I can’t.” The one thing he couldn’t do was leave it alone. Something was required.
“What do you think you can do? Change this?” Pop clenched the pages. “You think you can undo what happened twenty-two years ago?”
Lance shook his head. How had it come back to him? Wouldn’t Pop… ? Shouldn’t he… ? “Pop, I …”
Pop looked up, stark pain in his eyes. “Don’t try to play the hero.
You’re not Tony.”
He took it like a sucker punch. He’d let his guard down, and it caught
him where it hurt. “You’re not Tony.”
————
Rese walked out to the garden Lance had made beautiful, plants blooming and verdant along the flagstone paths, but not overflowing as they’d been. The raised beds were aromatic with herbs he no doubt knew, though she simply appreciated the effect. The people coming this evening would too.
Michelle had planned to hold the potluck there before she and Star came back unexpectedly. In spite of Star’s situation, she could hardly say no when Michelle had kept Baxter and watched out for the inn the whole time they were gone. But, even after two weeks with Lance’s family, facing a fresh horde was intimidating.
She could hide upstairs with Star, but … that was weak. Lance would be disappointed. If he were here he’d provoke her into attending. She dropped her chin and smiled.
She had been insulated, first by Mom’s antagonizing the neighbors, then living alone with Dad, working with the same handful of guys every day. She had dealt with homeowners and subcontractors, but not en masse. In school she had never roved with bands of girls through the halls, no slumber parties. She’d become a self-sufficient machine—there when Star needed her, but needing no one in return.
“In fact—” she looked down at Baxter—“being with Lance’s family was the most intensive interaction I’ve ever had.”
Baxter wagged his tail.
“I miss them.” She missed him. She crouched down and hugged Baxter’s neck, soaking up the scents of honeysuckle, roses, bougainvillea, and dog. What she really wanted was the scent of fresh-hewn wood, but Michelle and a few others would be there soon to set up. It would be rude to hole up in her workshop with a saw.
Before Lance, she wouldn’t have cared. Would not even have known. But now that he’d exposed her flaws, it didn’t feel right to settle back in. She looked over at the carriage house Lance had restored, shoring up the original stone walls and adding the skylighted roof and glassed front, the interior divisions of bedroom and bath. She smiled, recalling their argument over fixtures, her resistance to cost overruns, and his flabbergasted replies. She’d been impossible. But there was something in Lance that brought out the worst in her— and the best.
He just made her … more.
She walked over, peered through the glass beside the door, and glimpsed the guitar leaning in the corner. How long before its strains rose up and his aftershave tinged the air? How long before they were back in business and her kitchen became his? She ached. How could hope hurt as much as grief?
Baxter pressed into her and whined. “I know.” She crouched again and buried her face.
Michelle found her like that and laughed. “That dog gets more hugs than any human alive.”
Rese looked up. Michelle’s face was a broad plate with a wad of a nose, blunt eyebrows over eyes sunk too deep and narrowly, a generous mouth made incidental by a prominent cleft chin, and the whole, irresistibly warm and inviting. The face of a friend to walk beside.
“Mind if we set the food up in the kitchen; then folks can funnel out to the garden?”
“That’s fine. However you want to do it.” She had no doubt Michelle would handle things. That was another thing her face told you—competence, as well as compassion and companionship.
People arrived in twos and threes, and, like a frog in warming water, she handled the growing crowd with less discomfort than she’d expected. They brought the homey foods she remembered from Evvy’s funeral. Nothing like Lance’s cooking. But she hadn’t had a good meal since they got back, so she helped herself without reservation.
So many people introduced themselves, she would have been lost if she hadn’t just practiced on Lance’s family. The children playing in the yard reminded her of Lucy’s and Monica’s gaggle, the cousins, nieces, and nephews. The quiet the last couple days had been incredible, but so were the little voices laughing and calling to one another—and her. She got tugged into a game of tag that actually seemed to be everyone just running around tagging one another.
After enough of that, she collapsed on a bench Lance had rescued from the surrounding vines and saw with surprise that Star had come down, looking like a wraith beside Michelle, who loaded up a plate for her. How long would it be before Michelle mentioned God, and Star took off? But another woman joined them, and as they all talked, Star finished her plate with no problem.
Rese didn’t exactly mingle, but she talked to anyone who talked first. Nothing glib, but she managed.
“This is such a wonderful place,” Michelle said after most of the people had gone. “A real welcoming feel to it.”
Rese glanced around, trying to see the villa from an outsider’s perspective instead of her intimate knowledge of so many details. Welcoming and wonderful. Why not?
“I just can’t get over your doing it all yourself.”
“Lance did the carriage house.”
“And where is he?” She looked around as though he might be hidden somewhere.
Rese sighed. “Still working things out with Antonia.” She’d explained the purpose of their trip before they left, but it didn’t begin to address all the stuff that had happened since.
“Well.” Michelle clapped her hands to her thighs. “It looks like we’re just about wrapped up here.”
Shouldn’t she be relieved? As Michelle hauled a stack of serving dishes into the kitchen and filled the sink with suds, and several others scooped the remaining food into baggies and containers, she felt reluctant for them to leave.
“You two will use this, won’t you?” Jackie asked, sticking the food into the refrigerator.
“Sure, thanks.” Rese nodded. It appeared Star enjoyed their fare a lot more than hers. All that she could make with relative success were Lance’s recipes, the five breakfasts she had mastered when she’d planned to do without him. “Would you all like a latt?” And now she was fairly certain something had taken over her body as she indicated Lance’s fancy machine. “It’s the only piece of equipment I really know how to use.”
Jackie said she had to go. But the willowy, red-haired Karen, who had eaten with Star and Michelle, said, “Love one. Decaf, if you don’t mind.”
“Me too.” Deb sat down with Karen.
Michelle got watery in the eyes. “Nice of you to ask.”
Rese shrugged. It wasn’t a big thing, but then again it was. It was probably the first overture she’d made to other women, the first gesture of friendship she’d made in a long time, maybe ever. Lance’s sisters must have worn off.
There’d been too many surprises that evening for her to wonder that Star came in and sat with them, seemingly calm and attentive. From what she’d gleaned from the Internet on heroin withdrawal, Star’s symptoms shouldn’t be over yet, but after sleeping all day, she now led the conversation around Shakespeare and Monet, sonnets and impressionism, and her own style of painting that, amazingly, she’d shown Michelle in the carriage house.
Either it wasn’t smack, as everything had seemed to indicate, or Star was having a miraculous recovery. Rese made a second round of frothy drinks, letting the others carry the discussion. It was eleventhirty before they left and Star went upstairs, and midnight before she realized Lance hadn’t called.
————
His thoughts spun like a gyroscope on a string, balanced by the centrifugal force of his rage. It was like the hours and days waiting for Tony to come out of the rubble. Somehow it would be wrong, there’d be a different outcome. In spite of impossible odds, they would find the people alive, all the people who’d vanished. But hour by hour hope had died, birthing rage instead. Rage that demanded an outlet.
He could smell the sick sweet breath of the war protestors as he’d pressed among them with their signs. He’d carried Tony’s picture into their midst and ended up in a squad car. The emotion had been valid, but he had been fighting the wrong enemy.
He’d focused his anger on the tools, not the evil that drove them. Why had Tony been there, taking another man’s place, covering a shi
ft? It had seemed the supreme accident, but it wasn’t. It was intentional, God allowing it. For His purpose.
“Don’t try to play the hero. You’re not Tony.”
Not Tony. Not. Tony.
Pop was right. He wasn’t the broad-shouldered, attentiongrabbing, respect-commanding hero the world recognized. He was only a vessel. But God had removed Saul and chosen David, with only his sling—and his faith—to combat evil. Lance had no sling, but whatever he had …
He swallowed. He had snatched the letter back from Pop, gone upstairs, and climbed out to the fire escape. The stars had come and gone, and with the growing dawn his mind unraveled the facts and laid them out thread by thread.
Nonno had been murdered for doing his duty. Before and because of him, Vittorio, and, in effect, Quillan. Tony became a cop because of Nonno’s example. And duty took him as well. Lance felt like Job with his family crushed around him. For what? Daring to stand against evil. To make a difference.
He clenched his jaw. Twenty-two years they’d thought it an accident. He’d been six years old when Nonno’s car crashed, but he’d spent much of those six years at his grandfather’s knee, youngest and oldest.
Then there were the stories. Nonno’s generosity and the clever ways he’d helped people so it didn’t look like charity. His big heart. His big laugh. A singing voice that could make a stone cry, but no tolerance for cruelty in any form.
He detested bullies and opposed anyone who preyed on the weak. He had loved the law, served it sacrificially. But he was also a product of the tyranny his family escaped in Naples. He knew there were times the authorities wouldn’t or couldn’t help, when a man stood up and said, enough. Those times were called vendetta.
Nonno—cop, federal agent, undercover operative—had acted in the only way he could. Nothing stops evil except personal sacrifice. But someone had planned the accident so convincingly his own family had never suspected. There’d been no investigation at all. Now, twenty-two years later … what chance was there?
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