“As you already know, Mom won’t let me learn.”
“What are you, five?”
Moira flung the towel and accidentally hit her young plant. The dieffenbachia landed in the sink. She pulled it out as quickly as she could, but the soil—what remained of it—glistened with suds. “Happy now?” she snapped, then marched away.
Maeve followed her to the living room. “What’s wrong with you? Why won’t you just ask me for help if you want it?”
“You can’t teach, Maeve. You never could. Besides, if there’s not enough room for me inside your shadow, then there’s not enough room inside your spotlight, either.” A bitter tang rose in Moira’s throat, shame over her own resentment.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Are you jealous? I never thought you cared about—”
“Shut up, Maeve. Leave me alone and stay out of my mind!”
Moira left her there and walked back to the kitchen, but when she heard Maeve run up the stairs, her eyes burned with injustice and regret. She’d never felt such dissonance with her sister. It tipped the world upside down, made everything wrong-footed. But Moira couldn’t afford to think about that just now.
She washed and dried the dishes alone, then sat on the couch. No clock had ever moved so slowly; it had to be broken. Could it really be just after eleven? How would she ever live through another hour? Maybe time would move faster under the stars. She pulled on her jacket and shoes, then went outside, careful not to let the back door slam behind her.
“Maeve!”
Ian’s voice. Moira froze; she wasn’t ready for this. Why had she thought she’d be ready for this? Somehow she heard him speak again over the surge of blood in her ears.
“Here,” he said.
Something moved in front of her as she tried to adjust to the darkness. All at once she felt his hand on her cheek and his lips on her mouth, soft and pliant. She let out a soft Oh of surprise, then wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back until brightness permeated her shut eyelids.
Light from Poppy’s room streamed out at them.
“I have to go,” she whispered.
“Come back later,” he said and grabbed her hand.
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
“Tomorrow then. At eleven. Everyone’s asleep by then.”
It would give her time. Time to think and decide. She touched her hand to her lips and nodded.
Back inside, she shrugged off her jacket, and heard a creak of wood. Her mother stood at the top of the stairs, frowning down at her. Moira expected questions about the hour, why her feet were covered in shoes—shoes that felt light, made of magic glass—but that’s not what she heard.
“I need to change Poppy’s sheets. Can you help?”
Moira nodded and looked at the clock. It’s not midnight yet, she thought. It’s not midnight.
CHAPTER TEN
EROSION
The hotel appeared welcoming from the outside, with a sandstone exterior, birdbath, and porch, and little tables set on a cobblestone drive. It was as convivial within: wood floors, bold prints, and urns full of fresh flowers, and a fireplace to rival Garrick’s in an expansive entry.
“Buon giorno!” said the clerk, a twentysomething man with short curly black hair. A large wreath with a frosting of white lights adorned the wall behind him.
“Buon giorno! La signora Maeve Leahy e il signor Ryan,” I said, and he immediately responded with “Welcome to Roma!”—in English.
“I am Giovanni Benedetto Chioli.” He slapped his hand over the breast of his red hotel jacket. “Please tell me if you find something not to your liking. I am here, as you Americans say, twenty-four over seven.” He leaned close, whispered, “My mama is the boss.”
“Grazie, Signor Chioli—”
“No, please. You speak English, and I will get my practice.” I smiled. So much for applying my Italian. “And it is Giovanni. Your pleasure is my greatest wish.” He managed to sound sincere when he said this, and to include both Noel and me in his pledge. He set a key on the counter along with a big purple box wrapped with a bow. “Panettone,” he said. “For a happy Christmas.”
“Thank you.” I accepted the key and the panettone—an Italian brandied bread full of raisins and nuts—then moved aside as Noel stepped up to the counter.
“Sì? I mean, yes?”
I leaned forward.
“I’d also like to check in,” Noel said.
“I thought—” The clerk looked down at a computer screen, hit buttons. “There is just one room in order. Are you not—?”
“I knew it!” I practically shouted. “Kit did this. I’ll kill her.” Noel stared at me blankly. “I’m sorry,” I told the clerk, who wore a similarly bemused expression. “We’ll need two rooms, if you have them.”
“Mi dispiace!” He set a silver box on the counter this time. “For you,” he said, motioning to Noel. “I will fix it. You can … sit.”
He moved with a lithe grace around to the front of the counter, then waved for us to follow. We did—into a small room with a bar in the corner and several tables, each topped with a red flowered cloth and miniature lamp. He said something I didn’t catch to the man behind the bar, then turned back to us and set a generous plate of bread, oil, and olives on a table. “You will relax and have wine. It is on the … how do you say?”
“On the house?”
He smiled widely. “Sì! And you would like rooms that join? Is that, ah, good?”
“That would be perfect,” I said, and Giovanni gave a brisk nod and left. I dropped my bag, set my panettone on the table, and sat, but Noel remained standing with his silver box. “Leg cramp? Come on, sit.”
He did. Uncomfortable seconds passed.
“I’m sorry about all that,” I started. “Kit made the arrangements. I would never—”
“I know, Maeve.”
There it was again—that tension. But Noel knew that wasn’t what we were, it wasn’t what we were, it wasn’t.
“You said I could help you. What can I do for you?” he asked, and I felt no closer to him than a stranger who’d jingled the bells on the front door of Time After Time.
“You’re mad at me, aren’t you? My little adventure took you from far more important things. I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s—” He pushed his hands through his hair on a long inhale. “I’m tired. I’m hungry.” Exhale. He grabbed a hunk of bread, dredged it through a pool of herbed oil, and took a bite.
I looked at my watch: one o’clock. Fatigue must’ve eclipsed my hunger, and I hadn’t even considered his. Now I noticed the dull sheen of exhaustion in his eyes and that his cheeks, chin, and upper lip were roughed with dark pine-needle stubble. How many hours had he traveled on a rail to get to me? What had he been through before he’d trekked with me, lost, carrying my bag? And all I could focus on was a piece of metal.
We ate in silence, as a soap opera played out on a small-screen TV in the corner. I doubt Noel understood much, but then again, some things defied translation. I studied my hands when a half-clothed couple began making love on a kitchen table.
“All right,” he said, pushing aside the plate. “Let’s see your keris.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to—”
“Maeve, come on. I’m here. Ready, willing. Able.”
I glanced up, but the show had gone to commercial.
I burrowed into my bag, handed Noel the keris. And then I sat back and watched as he focused his keen eyes on the sheath. As he traced intricacies with his fingers. As the little mark, his thinking line, formed between his brows. God, I’d missed that. I’d missed him. I wanted the tension between us to go away. I wanted normal back.
“I know you took this to the shop,” he said. “What did my grandfather have to say?”
“He said the keris is beautiful, probably worth a lot, and in good shape, but he couldn’t date it.”
Noel nodded. “How is he?”
“Great. The shop’s been kic
king this month.”
“But how’s he doing?” He looked up, and I noticed his eyes had softened, carried now a warmth reminiscent of melted chocolate. Ah, normal. There it was.
“Really, he’s great.” I hesitated. “He misses you, though.”
“Well,” he said. “I miss him.”
The barman appeared. He regarded the keris with vague interest, then left us with full glasses of red wine. I took a sip as Noel unsheathed the blade. He turned it over once. Twice. “What made you fly all the way to Europe for this thing?”
“The empu … he was following me around Betheny and—”
“Hold on.” He leaned forward. “Following you? In Betheny?”
“Around the university. He nailed a book about Javanese weapons to my office door after I won the keris at the Block.”
“Did you call the police, have him checked out?”
“No, it didn’t make me that nervous. I felt more intrigued than anything. Besides, Garrick likes him.”
“They met?”
“Yep. Sri Putra visited the shop.” I’d leave out the possibility that he might’ve followed me there. “I’ve never seen him, though. Just his weird black hat at the auction. He bid on the keris, too,” I explained. “My guess is that he left that book for me afterward to teach me something about the blade.”
“Why would he?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “To be helpful? That’s partly why I’m here, to understand all of that. And the notes.”
“What notes?”
“Two notes at my office. The second one invited me here.”
“So, the one you found today makes three?”
I paused in the act of ripping off another hunk of bread. “You saw that? And here I thought I was quick.”
“You were. He didn’t notice.” He smirked. “Did you bring those notes with you, by any chance?”
“Sure,” I said, my hand already rummaging through my coat pocket. I handed him all three notes, then watched as he considered them in turn.
“So you didn’t have this empu meeting set up? You weren’t in touch with him about coming?”
“Nope. It was all pretty last minute.”
“Guy makes a lot of assumptions.”
“I guess so.” Noel, I noticed, liked green olives. I chose a black one, popped it in my mouth.
“Don’t you think it’s a little reckless, flying over here to meet up with someone who’s been following you around?”
“Well, it’s not like I wanted to at first.”
“But you did.”
“I did. My father bought the ticket.”
“What if I hadn’t been here? What if you’d run into that Italian ass without me?”
I rolled the olive pit around in my mouth. “What if I had?”
“Not all men are nice.”
I knew he meant this word, nice, as a reference to us, because I often said that he was one of the nicest men I’d ever met—a compliment that was both true and safe. But the use of the term now made me bristle—as if I were a naive five-year-old who needed a warning about men with candy.
“Didn’t you find it odd that he was in that apartment, acting like he belonged there?” he asked. “Empus don’t generally live in Italy. Maybe that guy’s some con artist, empu posing—”
I laughed, and because I was still irritated with him, it erupted from me as a rude guffaw. “If you’d taken more than a semester of Italian you might have understood that guy when he told you he’s the landlord,” I said. “Besides, your own grandfather met the man. The empu is Javanese. And I saw the keris Sri Putra bought at Time After Time inside his apartment—an apartment overstuffed with Indonesian culture, I might add.”
“I don’t like this,” he said.
“I think you’re overreacting.”
“I think I’m underreacting.”
He studied me for a minute, then pulled out a magnifying glass and bent over the blade. I breathed, slow and silent. It was Noel’s skill at centered observation that made him so adept at finding treasures and conveying details in his art, but I always felt a little itchy when he turned those eyes on me.
“I know why my grandfather couldn’t tell you much,” he said after a while.
“Why?”
“The luks, first of all. Luks are the—”
“Curves of the blade, I know. I learned that all on my own. The Internet, see, isn’t such an evil thing.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion,” he said with a crooked smile. “Did you read, on your Internet, that the luks are always an odd number?”
“Yes. Garrick said this one has eleven or thirteen.”
“The luks are ambiguous here at the end,” he said, marking the blade’s length with his fingers, rounding the tip. “It looks like it has twelve. That can kill the value.”
“I don’t really care about its value. I won’t sell it.”
“But you’ll travel thousands of miles to learn more about it. I don’t get that. Why?” He leaned back, and then he laughed. “Don’t tell me—he talked up magic and stardust, didn’t he?”
I pursed my lips.
“And you believed it!”
I tapped my foot on the floor, counted to ten.
“Come on. What did the proprietor and chief storyteller of Time After Time tell you about the myths and legends of the mysterious keris?” he asked in a mock-spooky voice.
I leaned close. “He said the keris can decrease inhibitions, make a person not call the police when they should, fly off to Rome at a moment’s notice and—most nonsensical of all—endure their friend’s insinuations that they’re an idiot incapable of separating fact from fantasy.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” I pushed the plate back at him. “Maybe you’re still hungry. The olives are particularly … nice … don’t you think?”
“Huh.” He took an olive. I watched him chew and refused to blink when he watched me right back. “Did he tell you to sleep with it under your pillow? That a nightmare tells you if the keris is good or bad?”
“No,” I lied.
“What did he plant in your head? Did he find a man in the blade?”
I said nothing.
“Did he mention the hole?”
“He said the hole makes the keris powerful,” I conceded. “Like a window for future events or—”
He snorted. “Thought so.”
“All right, Boy Wonder,” I said. “What do you think?”
“Batman, please. Boy Wonder was just a tool,” he said, and I smiled despite myself. “Expert opinion? The aperture doesn’t look man-made. See the blemishes?” He passed me his looking glass, and I peered through it at my blade. The streaks looked exaggerated, and the hole seemed rough edged and marred with flecks of rust. “That reads like neglect, not empu intention.”
“How old is it?”
He tapped his fingers on the table. “I’d say seventeenth century.”
“What else? Why’s it always warm?”
“Because the room’s warm. Look, whatever he told you, it’s not magic metal. It’ll be room temperature.”
“It feels warm to me.”
“Then you’re imagining it.”
“What about the stain?” I turned the blade over, pointed to the skid of my own blood married to the metal. “I cut myself. That’s a blood mark that won’t come out.”
“How did you clean it?”
“Soap and water. Then Garrick used something at the shop.”
Again, he examined the blade with the glass. “I don’t think that’s blood.”
“Trust me on this, it is,” I said.
“It looks like part of the design to me.”
“It’s not.”
He chuckled and tucked away his magnifying glass. “Is there anything more I can tell you in my professional capacity, or are you through with me?”
“I’m through with you. Want me to buy your ticket back to Paris?” My gut knotted whe
n his expression blanked. Ah, hell. Over the line. Damn line. I never knew for sure where it lay.
I tucked the keris back where it belonged, then found the plastic sack. I’d bought more than a guidebook at the airport shop. It wasn’t wrapped, but did that matter at a time like this? I set the small bag between us. It gaped open. “For you,” I said. “Plastic-bag wrap is in vogue this year, you know.”
“What’s this?”
“Santa time.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“It’s okay that you don’t have anything for me. Come on.”
“I do have something for you.” He tossed his napkin on the table. “It’s buried under a heap of clothes.”
I pushed the bag closer, persisted until he reached in and pulled out a leather-covered book. He looked through the pages, some lined, some blank. My muscles tensed when he said nothing.
“It’s an art journal,” I said.
“Thank you.” His smile seemed … sad. “I haven’t been drawing.”
My mood wilted a little more. “Oh. Bad gift.”
“No,” he said. “Perfect gift. I haven’t drawn, but I want to. I will.”
“No time?”
“Something like that.” He reached out and brushed his hand over my cheek. “You had a hair near your mouth,” he explained. “Friends help friends prevent hairballs, you know.”
I turned my head, and noticed that the television couple still writhed together on the table.
A WIDE WINDOW and pair of rose curtains framed a segment of the city in my suite, a plush sage settee sprawled before it. The unconventional bed—two doubles separated by an inch or two but united by a single headboard—boasted a lavish display of pillows. The air carried a hint of lemon, a fan’s quiet purr. Kit had done well. I’d bring her back some good chocolate, enough to keep her blood sugar humming into the new year.
It finally hit me as I unpacked. I was sleepy. Dorothy-through-the-poppies sleepy. I attempted to calculate how long it had been since I’d had even a nap, and gave up, sinking into the delectable comfort offered by my mattress. All of my muscles cooed and sighed, Yes, more.
The Last Will of Moira Leahy Page 12