“I read about you coming to the Mozart Festival. Drove to Salzburg. Thought maybe…” He shook his head, sighed. “You played his Piano Concerto number—”
“Number 21,” she whispered. “The Andante section—”
“Was spectacular.” He smiled. “You had a good mentor. I remember rehearsing it with you.” He reached out to touch her cheek. “You were luminous that night, Slim. Astonishing.”
“But you didn’t come backstage.”
He gazed at the distant hills, melting now into the sunset. “The program said you were married, with a son. You had moved on, had a family…”
She stared at him. Your son, Zach. Tell him now. But she was still unable to say the words.
She simply shook her head and turned away from him.
And so they sat together without speaking, while the light fell from the sky and the clatter of the cicadas surrounded them, each lost in their own thoughts of what might have been. The air turned cooler, chasing Celeste and TJ into the house to shower before dinner. Maggie waved to the child, then turned to the man who had loved her so long ago. It was time.
“Zach. I need to know.”
“Why I lied to you. Yes.” He took his jacket and dropped it over her shoulders. His left hand came up slowly and cupped her chin. “You are more beautiful now than that day you barged into my rehearsal room, Slim,” he said, leaning toward her. “Do you remember our first kiss? Leaning against that piano?”
Without warning, his mouth found hers.
Shock arced like a lightning bolt through her body. Just for a moment, she remembered the taste of him, the scent of his skin, the hardness of his chest beneath her fingertips.
Then she pulled back.
“Don’t.” The boy’s lips were soft, she thought, but the man’s lips were hard. She pushed his hand aside. His beautiful hand, once so sensitive and erotic. Her voice trembled. “If you want me to stay, then don’t.”
His hand dropped to his side. “Sorry. I gave up my right to touch you a long time ago.”
“I thought you loved me, but you pretended to be dead!” The stark pain splintered the air between them into shards of glass. “You promised to come home to me, Zach. You promised.”
“I did love you, Maggie.” He gazed toward the vineyard. “Probably still do.”
She looked at the scarred, bearded face, familiar and yet unfamiliar. “The woman you loved no longer exists, Zach. The woman you knew is gone.”
“I tried to forget about you for thirty years, Slim. I woke up thinking about you every morning. I fell asleep missing you every night. Why did you come back, dammit? To break my heart all over again?”
“What about my heart, Zach? It was thirty years for me, too. All the endless questions. Looking for you in the subway, in the market, in the concert hall. I’d see a man…and my heart would stop. But it was never you. I knew if you were alive, you would have called.” Her breath caught. “But you were in Austria. And now you’re here, with a child.”
Maggie swiped at the tears that ran down her face. “You say you loved me, so why? You look me in the eye and tell me how you could let me think you were dead, how you could be so damned heartless. So cruel.” She locked eyes with him. “Maybe you didn’t die, Zach, but a big piece of me did.”
He looked down at his body. “A part of me died, too, Maggie.”
“Your arm wouldn’t have mattered to me.”
He turned his right side toward her, so that the empty sleeve of his sweater swung across his chest. “Half a man, coming home to make love to his girl?” he asked brutally. “What a fucking joke! I couldn’t piss without a plastic bag, Maggie. Is that what you deserved? A one-armed fucking piano player who couldn’t even balance his body over yours?”
“Don’t, Zach.”
“Why not? You were so perfect. I was…a broken, impotent junkie. Afraid to sleep. Or if I took drugs to sleep, I’d wake up crying. Screaming. All I could give you was rage.”
“I wouldn’t have turned away from you,” she whispered.
“It was so complicated,” he said. “After all those months in the rehab hospital, I was strung out, big time, on rum and dope. And the PTS—I’d hear a car backfire and I’d shout ‘Down!’ and hit the sidewalk. I wore sunglasses all the time because my eyes had seen so much death.” His voice took on a new edge. “Then there were the nightmares, that no drug or double whiskey could kill. How could I have been there for you? I couldn’t take care of my own damned life.”
“We could have taken care of each other.”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken, staring at the toe of his boot. “I went over there to prove something to my father. My dad, the war hero.” His voice faltered. “I never told you about the last time I saw my father.”
She waited wordlessly.
“He told me that the piano was a hobby, not a real man’s job. That I would never put food on the table.” He took a shuddering breath. “Called me a coward and a failure. Said I’d never be a real man.”
His devastation thrust at her. She wanted to say, Your father misses you. He adores our son. But she couldn’t. “I didn’t know” she said.
“That night I went to a bar, ran into a high school friend who was headed to the Middle East. Told me about a peacekeeping program over there.” He turned to her. “Dad wanted a hero, goddamn it, and I was going to give him one. I’d go, do something for my country, make Dad proud, and come home to you. But, Jesus, it was so much worse than I expected.”
“Oh, Zach—”
He rubbed his hand over his eyes as if he could wipe away the images. “War changes you, Maggie. You become somebody else.”
The words touched Maggie’s cheek with a cold ghostly breath.
“Beirut, so hot you could smell it.” Zach’s words broke into her thoughts, halting, his eyes unfocused, locked on the distant hills. “The first thing the guys said to me was, ‘Just don’t show me any pictures of your sweetheart back home.’ They understood.”
He shook his head. “I was living with them in the Marine barracks. They were my friends. And then—”
She winced. “Maybe you shouldn’t—”
But it was as if a solid wall of rock had blasted open and Zach’s words rushed at her in a flood of wild water.
“It was just after dawn. Already hot. I couldn’t sleep. I was outside, sharing a smoke with a Marine. Quiet, so quiet all I could hear was the guy’s breath. I remember that I wondered why there were no bird sounds.”
“I saw the truck coming at us. The explosion came out of nowhere, so loud and close your eardrums burst, and suddenly the morning was alive with fire, and I was flying through the air. One minute you were joking with a buddy, the next minute you were scraping him off your skin.”
He closed his eyes. “I saw the bomber’s face, Maggie, just before the truck blew. He was smiling.”
Zach gazed out into the blackness of the vineyard as if it held the answers he sought. “My pal didn’t make it,” he said, “And I was left for dead, buried beneath a pile of bodies. A medic found me. Or what was left of me.”
She leaned toward him in the shadows. “I would have come to you in the hospital,” she said.
“I didn’t want you, dammit! I was halfway around the world in a stinking hospital with kids just like me, trying to cope with lost limbs and burned bodies and pain. It was no place for someone like you. The music in my head changed. It became all shrieking alarms and black, horrible sounds.”
Yes, she told him silently, I know how that feels.
“I don’t remember too much about the months after the bombing. Just pain. Pain and drugs and fog. But it was much worse when the truth finally hit me. I could never play the piano again.” The dark, haunted eyes held hers. “I wanted to die, Maggie.”
He looked up at the purple sky. “To be honest, sometimes it still feels as if I did die. The music was gone. And I didn’t have you. I had nothing.”
“Oh, Zach,” she whispered.
She wanted to say, you had me, Zach. You had us. But she knew it wouldn’t have been enough for him.
His hand found her fingers in the darkness. “Of all people, Slim, you understand. The other guys, they made plans, called home. Just two of us—the high school basketball hero and the fucking piano player—just the two of us would lie awake in the dark and talk about dying.”
“No.” There was denial in the shake of her head.
His voice was a low growl. “I couldn’t go home, don’t you see? The music was lost somewhere with the arm and pieces of my gut and groin in a stinking burning desert.” It was a flat, unemotional recital. “I lost a lot more than my right arm in that bombing, Maggie.”
She reached out and touched his empty sleeve. “I know, Zach. I know what you lost. I just wish you had told me. I wish you had come home.”
“And dragged you down into hell with me? ‘Hi, honey, I’m home!’ Strung out on heroin, having terrible flashbacks, sleeping with a loaded gun under my pillow, wanting to use it on anything that moved. Maybe myself. Or, God help me, maybe you.”
“You would never have hurt me, Zach.”
“You think so? There was a grand piano at the rehab center, a gorgeous Bechstein. As soon as I could walk, use my left arm, I found myself a mallet. And in the middle of the night I bashed that damned beautiful piano to splinters.” His fingers raked through his long hair, sweeping it back from his face.
“I tried to commit suicide that night in the hospital. But I was so drunk that I blew it. For men like me,” said Zach, “suicide is always there, lurking like a dark monster in the wings.”
“Listen to me,” she demanded. “You’ve carried this for so long. But it’s over now, Zach, it’s time to let go. You’ve made a good life here for yourself and TJ and Celeste. You’ve written that extraordinary concerto.”
“But I’m not the man you loved.”
She watched him in the soft darkness, unable to answer. If he had not disappeared so many years ago, would they still be together? Ultimately, the answer could have been no. She would never know…
“Fucking injuries,” sighed Zach, turning away. “I can’t play the piano. And I can’t ever have children, Maggie.” You have Brian. “Zach…” she began.
The child called from inside the farmhouse, and Zach stood up. “It’s getting late.”
“Please, just a moment more. I need to tell you—” But Zachary Law silenced her with her son’s dark eyes. “Smiling-fucking-bomber…” he whispered. “The Gulf never goes away, Maggie. If you were there, no explanation is necessary. But if you weren’t, no explanation is possible.”
* * *
“She’s what?”
“You heard me, Mike. Maggie is spending the night. She just texted me.”
“She wants to stay with Zach Law?”
Sugarman let out his breath. “I haven’t known what she really wants since I met her. Haven’t been able to change her mind, either. All I know is, she’s staying.”
“Over my dead body,” muttered Beckett, disconnecting his cell with an angry snap.
Beckett stared down at the lamp-lit house, shining like a beacon in the black expanse of vineyard. He closed his eyes and once again saw that kiss on the terrace.
As he stood up and checked his gun, the words of an old country song slipped unbidden into his head. If tomorrow never comes…will she know how much I loved her?
Damn. It took him by surprise, how much it mattered. Shook him badly.
Didn’t matter now. Never did. It was time. Knowing full well what was about to happen, Beckett began to make his way quietly down through the pines and across the black hillside toward the house.
What will she think, he asked himself in the lonely darkness, when she discovers your betrayal?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
LE REFUGE. AFTER MIDNIGHT, JULY 11
Dressed entirely in black, Dane stood in the shadow of the pines, just steps away from the terrace of Le Refuge. It was pitch dark, just before twelve-thirty a.m.
He slipped the key to the French doors from his jeans pocket as he scanned the shadows. No sign of the Dobermans. But he could take care of any problems.
The long blade of his knife pressed against his thigh as he moved silently across the stones.
* * *
Something was wrong.
Restless, unable to sleep, Maggie couldn’t get Zach—or the child sleeping just down the hall—out of her mind. Was that a sound? Somewhere in the house?
She slipped out of bed, moved quietly to the door, checked the long, shadowed passage, listened. All quiet. Just her imagination, working overtime. Too much had happened too quickly. She turned toward the tall antique mirror. Johnny?
Silence. Her own reflection stared back at her from the sepia glass.
Okay, then. She turned on the bedside lamp and reached for the glossy magazine on the bedside table. Provençal recipes, French politics, the latest fashions on Rue Faubourg… She flipped the pages, listening for sounds from the hallway.
Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed the half hour. Twelve thirty already? Just one more article, she told herself. Concentrate. She turned the page and found a story on Europe’s top classical music festivals. Intrigued, she scanned the list. Aix-en-Provence, of course. London’s Handel Festival. Music in Bonn, Istanbul, Dubrovnik, Ravello, Salzburg… She stopped, her eyes coming back to Ravello.
Ravello. She remembered very well the tiny Italian hill village perched high above the Amalfi coastline—so heart-stoppingly beautiful, it had inspired Richard Wagner to compose his opera, Parsifal. And over the years, it had become the site for one of Europe’s most spectacular classical outdoor festivals. She had been invited to solo there one summer—when?—a decade ago, with the San Francisco Philharmonic. It had been an “All Chopin” concert, set in the gardens of the ancient Villa Rufolo, with the tuxedoed orchestra arranged behind her on a huge, natural stone ledge high above the coast.
In the quiet bedroom, Maggie closed her eyes and saw herself seated at a grand piano in a long, fitted black gown, bathed in moonlight. The stage was lit by small, winking lights. Above her, the grand expanse of glowing Mediterranean sky. And beyond the terrace, the steep, dramatic fall of tall pines, rooftops, olive gardens and flowers, down to a deep blue sea.
The air was summer warm and smelled of roses. The notes of Chopin’s Ballade No. 4 in F minor—her all-time favorite piece—flew from her fingers.
That night, she remembered, there had only been the beauty of the starry night and the music. There had been no sign of the tragic explosion so many years earlier that had taken the lives of several musicians and guests during a performance of Tartini on that very stage—
Maggie’s eyes flew open. The long-ago explosion in Ravello…
Zach’s earlier words clicked into her head. My friend Bee, the brilliant violinist. Her brother owned a vineyard called Le Refuge. There was a terrible accident. I never saw her again.
“Oh, my God,” whispered Maggie. Was it possible?
She slipped quickly out of the bed, reaching for her shoulder bag. In a large zippered pocket, she retrieved her husband’s calendar diary and searched for his last entries.
In the last months of his life, he’d been to Rome, Brittany, Vienna, Hyères. And there it was, in his bold script. Naples/BF. She’d had no idea what the notation meant.
But now—when she had traveled to Ravello with the symphony orchestra, she had flown into Naples. Ravello was only an hour’s twisting ride by car to the north. Johnny had gone to Naples. To Ravello? Because of someone with the initials BF?
Bianca Farnese. Magg
ie’s heart was hammering like steel piano strings in her chest. Bianca Farnese had been one of the world’s leading young violinists. Could she have been Johnny’s “BF,” Zach’s “Bee”? She’d been destined for such a bright and glorious future in the music world. But then she had died, shockingly and far too soon, in a horrible terrorist firestorm when a bomb exploded on stage during a classical performance of Tartini’s Devil’s Trill in Ravello.
Maggie closed her eyes, trying to remember details. It had happened sometime in the mid-eighties. A special classical performance, in honor of the newly elected Italian Prime Minister and the US Ambassador to Italy. So many had died. And, in the end, chaos for the Italian government, and crippling distrust of the Americans. Just the kind of story her husband would have investigated.
Maggie looked down at the leather calendar clutched in her hands and thought once more about Zach’s words. Bee’s brother owned a vineyard, Le Refuge.
But Victor Orsini had owned Le Refuge.
Was Bianca Farnese the sister of Victor Orsini?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
SOUTH OF FRANCE. AFTER MIDNIGHT, JULY 11
Come with me, Vito!
Just an hour’s drive to the south of Le Refuge, Victor Orsini stood alone by the night-filled window. The notes of Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 flew like a tempest through the dark bedroom—complex, ferocious, impossible.
He raised his head, eyes closed, listening. The Paganini—considered by many to be the most difficult of all violin pieces—had been his sister’s signature piece. “The music flowed through you like some wild rushing river, il mio amore,” he whispered.
His sister’s voice answered, spinning like silver above the notes—high, young, musical. “Come with me, Vito!”
“But you have not finished practicing. Father will be furious.”
“I’ve been practicing since sunrise! Look, my fingers are bleeding! It’s my birthday, Vito, finally thirteen! I want to celebrate!”
“We will all celebrate tonight. After you’ve practiced.”
“No, now! I want to climb over the wall, run through the woods, have a picnic with you by the lake. Cook will make us sandwiches—”
The Lost Concerto Page 29