But she didn’t say a word.
That was when it hit him.
If he’d been terrified before, now he’d stepped into another dimension of hell. Suddenly, everything stopped around him. The rain, the wind, his fear of heights. It all fell away, because when he looked up into her face and her eyes, he saw she’d gone to the dark place.
Her long hair hung around her face in wet strands. Her eyes were black. The skin on her face was lined with age. Yet all he saw was his beautiful young love. A love he didn’t want to lose. Not now. Not yet. They were supposed to die at an ancient age in each other’s arms.
Her hand rested on his cheek.
All too soon, the moment ended. The rain was still pelting down on him. His weak and useless legs were shaking on the ladder. And the space where his Assunta’s hand had been was ice cold.
She stood up.
‘No!’ Samuel was moving now, his arms pulling him up and his legs finding strength born from pure desperation. ‘No! No! No!’
He kept screaming it, hoping it would help. Hoping it would break the spell she’d fallen under, reach her somewhere, wherever she was, in that place she fell into at times like this, times that had started after Lily died. Who wouldn’t feel their world had ended when their child was dead? But the episodes had never gone away.
He was scrabbling now, awkward, ungainly, doing whatever he had to to get on the roof. But Assunta was on her feet and walking, already strides ahead.
Later, he would look back on that moment a million times, and each time he would marvel at how calm she appeared. She was walking, just as if she was off for a stroll on a hilly slope, heading home.
There! He’d made it! He was up, on his feet, staggering but not falling, negotiating the steepness of the roof. He was doing it! He was gaining on her.
He had to get to her.
To touch her. To hold her.
He had to stay on his feet.
‘Goddamn it!’ he yelled, slipping dangerously on the roof. ‘Come on, God, I need you now. Send your angels. Send yourself. Please!’
But it was too late. She walked to the edge of the roof and simply kept walking. Without a backwards glance, she took flight.
51
Lara
Lara felt shaky and empty. The burden of relaying Samuel’s story may have been lifted from her, but it had been replaced by the heaviness of seeing the pain on Carlo’s face and the shock on Matteo’s. She felt guilty for passing on such grief.
She took a deep breath and let it out unhappily. ‘So that’s why I’m here. Samuel sent me. He needed you to know but he was…afraid,’ she finished lamely. ‘It was too much to send in a letter or something…and…’ She was lost for words. She’d said so much already.
From the lounge room, she could still hear the fire crackling gently in the kitchen, and the constant drip of the whey making its way down the stone channel and into the bucket.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Matteo said, inching forward on the couch next to her.
‘And nor do I!’ Carlo boomed, making Lara jump and Matteo visibly flinch. ‘What you say is false. It is not true!’ His face had turned beetroot in seconds. His meaty fists conducted an orchestra with every word. ‘Assunta fell! It was an accident, one caused by Samuel’s laziness and failure to protect his wife.’
‘Zio,’ Matteo interjected. ‘I don’t think Lara would come here to lie.’
‘Then it is Samuel who lies,’ Carlo said, heaving himself to his feet. ‘Assunta did not…’ His face twisted. ‘She could not have.’ A spray of Italian followed, his eyes on Matteo but his hand flying to point at Lara every so often, making her wince. She shrank into the cushions. Matteo got to his feet as well, standing protectively in front of her, forcibly quietening his own voice, hands in front of him in a let’s all calm down manner.
This seemed to infuriate Carlo further, his hands ascending in response. Matteo let out a frustrated sigh and scratched his head. Carlo made some sort of final declaration before glaring at Lara and stalking from the room, slamming the heavy wooden door behind him.
There was a moment’s silence while they each breathed.
Lara bit her lip and shook her head slowly at Matteo, who stood with his hands on his hips. His eyes held hers and she was certain she could see disappointment there. She’d ruined his beautiful reunion with Carlo.
‘Are you okay?’ he asked her.
She nodded.
‘He’s not…I know he is loud, but he isn’t…he would never—’
‘It’s okay, don’t worry about it.’ She brushed off his concerns, though in truth Carlo’s anger had unnerved her. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this story before, but I…I don’t know, I felt loyalty to Samuel, I suppose.’
Matteo rubbed at his forehead, whether to ease some sort of pain or to help him think she wasn’t sure. ‘I should have known he had something up his sleeve,’ he muttered.
‘What do you mean?’ Lara hoisted herself from the sofa so she could look him in the eye.
Matteo paced in a circle. ‘I asked Samuel if it would be okay if you came away with me for a couple of days.’
‘You did?’
‘I felt so bad after the wolves. You were so sad and wouldn’t talk to me. I didn’t want you to think of me that way, you know. If you never saw me again…or if you left Italy and that was the last memory you had…I just wanted to give you good memories.’
Lara melted. ‘You are so beautiful.’ She took his hands. ‘I’m still sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to do it at all, but he pleaded with me. I tried to talk him out of it; I tried to get him to ring up, or write, or ask you to do it.’
Matteo grimaced at that.
‘You are his family, not me,’ she went on. ‘I thought it would be better coming from Carlo’s own family, but Samuel thought it was too much of a burden. And you and I weren’t exactly talking at that point. I thought I was coming on this trip to help Samuel, not to…you know,’ she said softly.
Matteo’s set mouth relaxed.
‘What are we going to do about Carlo?’ she asked, partly anxious about how to get through the night here in the house with him and partly sad for this zio she’d grown so fond of in just one afternoon. She’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt that his reaction to her story had been a wild exception to his normal behaviour.
‘He’s gone out to feed the cows,’ Matteo said, his thumbs gently rubbing the backs of her hands. ‘I think we should leave him be for the moment.’
She nodded. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
Matteo raised his eyes to the ceiling and drew a deep breath.
Lara laid her palm over his heart. ‘Should I leave? You could drop me somewhere in the village for the night, get me out of the way. Maybe then you and he could talk this through.’
He thought about this for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip. ‘It doesn’t seem right to leave you on your own in a strange village. I should come too.’
‘No. Don’t be silly. Your uncle needs you. I’ll be fine, really. Stay here and talk. You might not get another chance for a long time.’
Matteo kissed her and even under the strained circumstances it was the loveliest kiss she’d ever had.
‘Ready to head down the mountain?’ Matteo asked later that evening.
They were standing at the top of the stairs in Carlo’s home, Lara’s suitcase at their feet. She pulled the box that Samuel had given her from her bag.
‘Here,’ she whispered, handing it to Matteo. ‘Samuel wanted Carlo to have this. I was going to give it to him after I told him the story but then things got a bit out of hand.’
‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice equally low, turning over the wine-coloured antique box in his hand. They didn’t actually need to be whispering. Carlo had gone underground to the cheese maturation cave below the house to wash maturing cheese rinds with salty water to prevent spoilage. Lara was disappointed to miss it. Matteo had described the cave as
something to behold, with a constant supply of water straight from the mountain running into a small basin attached to the wall, providing a consistent temperature and humidity all year round, something modern-day cheesemakers fretted over even with the latest refrigeration technology.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to open it; it didn’t seem right.’
Matteo hesitated. ‘Do you think I should?’
Lara shrugged.
Matteo clasped the box in his left hand and prised it open gently with his right, the hinges rusty and unwilling. Inside was a pendant on a tarnished silver chain. He frowned. ‘What is it?’
‘I’ve seen that before,’ Lara said. ‘It’s the same symbol as on the name plate on the villa—Giardino dei Fiori.’
Matteo carefully lifted the pendant to study the four-petalled flower inside the silver diamond more closely. ‘It looks very old.’
‘It does,’ Lara agreed, horrified that she’d been carrying something so precious around with her in her suitcase. ‘How old is the villa? Sixteen hundreds?’
Matteo nodded, still squinting at the pendant, turning it this way and that.
‘It couldn’t be that old, surely,’ Lara said, feeling sick.
‘I have no idea. Jewellery is not my specialty. Goats, good. Jewellery, no.’ He dangled it to its full length—about thirty centimetres.
A loud thump from under the house signalled that Carlo had slammed the door to the maturation cave. Matteo quickly replaced the necklace in the box and snapped down the lid. ‘Let’s hope Carlo will know what it means.’
Residence Briona was a rather stunning fifteenth-century hotel, with multiple storeys of stone archways and porticos, and medieval tunnels. While she wasn’t pleased with the circumstances that had led her to be here, Lara was still happy to see the building firsthand.
Late room-service couscous con pesce had displaced the knots inside her that had been there since she’d told Carlo her story. Now she sat in her tastefully decorated blue and white room and phoned Samuel.
‘How are things with Henrik?’ she asked.
‘He broke his toe this morning.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘I wish I was.’
‘That’s terrible. What was he doing?’
‘Collecting the eggs.’
‘But that’s…’ Lara tried to picture how such a gentle activity could lead to a broken bone.
‘Trust me, I know.’
‘Did any eggs survive?’ she ventured, trying to lighten the moment.
‘A few.’ Samuel sounded tired.
‘So, who’s looking after you now?’ she said, anxiety rising—had her charge been left alone to fend for himself?
‘I think we’re looking after each other,’ Samuel said and, to Lara’s immense delight and relief, she heard him chuckle. ‘I have feet; he has hands. Now we must go everywhere together, like conjoined twins with our walking aides.’
She grinned at the mental image. ‘I’m sorry I’m not there to help, or at least to watch you both getting around together.’ Lara paused. ‘Matteo and I have been to see Carlo.’
Samuel’s intake of breath was audible, and she ached with sympathy for him.
‘How did he take it?’ Samuel asked, and she was sad to hear that the previous lightness in his voice had gone, each word now sagging with weight.
‘Not especially well,’ she said.
Samuel held his silence.
‘And I delivered the necklace too.’
‘Good,’ he said, relieved.
‘Can I ask where it came from? It seemed very old.’
‘More than a hundred years.’
‘It was Assunta’s, I assume?’ She knew she was being nosey now, but she couldn’t help herself. Besides, after being burdened with that story and bearing the brunt of Carlo’s fury, she felt entitled to some answers.
‘It was her grandmother’s, forged in the late eighteen hundreds. They still had many jewellery-makers in the family then. It was a wedding gift, I think.’
‘And it’s the same as the plate on the house—Giardino dei Fiori.’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it very valuable? I only ask because I was kind of horrified that I’d been carrying around this priceless heirloom.’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Samuel said. ‘Not in the way you’re thinking. But in terms of its sentimental value to her family, yes.’
‘So what does it mean? Why give it to Carlo? Why wouldn’t you give it to Giovanna or Lily?’
‘Carlo and I fell out after Assunta died. He blamed me for her death. I blamed myself, but not in the way he thought. He believed I was ashamed that I hadn’t fixed the roof—and of course there was truth in that. But I blamed myself for…’
‘Because you couldn’t save her.’
Samuel took another moment to gather his strength to go on. ‘Carlo came to the villa one night, late, about a week after Assunta’s death, a couple of days after her funeral. Her funeral notice was still plastered over the church walls in the village. He’d been drinking. He stumbled out of the car and fell onto the lawn. He was crying. She’d been like a sister to him—his little sister.’
‘But you’d been close too, hadn’t you?’
‘Like brothers. But only as adults. Assunta had been with him from childhood.’
Lara thought of Sunny and the world of intimate knowledge and history they shared. It was true that no one could ever come close to replacing that. And now with the precious cargo they shared between them, they would share a deep bond for life.
‘He needed someone to blame, and I was there.’
‘What happened?’
‘We fought. Wrestled like stupid boys, punching each other.’
‘Weren’t you, like, sixty-something?’
Samuel laughed, but the sound was empty. ‘I was sixty-four. He was sixty-seven.’
‘What happened?’
‘He kept yelling at me that it was my fault, and it was all I could do not to scream at him and tell him the truth. So because I couldn’t scream it, I channelled all that rage into my fists and I broke one of his ribs.’
Lara gasped, too shocked to speak.
‘Well, to keep a long story short, it hardened everyone’s hearts against me even more than before. Carlo left. He couldn’t stay in Tuscany anymore. He said everywhere he looked he saw Assunta. But before he left, he demanded the necklace from me, saying I had no right to it because it belonged to the Palladino bloodline.’
‘But your children are Palladinos too,’ Lara argued, horrified. (Matteo was right: she should have watched The Godfather.)
Samuel sniffed. ‘The remaining family asked them to choose between me and their Italian family. They went to London, and it’s been too difficult for them to come back.’
Lara’s mouth hung open.
‘Carlo went up north to be with his ailing uncle and take over the house. If there was anyone left here who felt anything for me, they gave up all pretence once Carlo departed. As far as they were concerned, I caused his leaving too.’
‘Goodnight, Samuel!’ Lara heard Henrik call in the background.
‘Buona notte,’ Samuel called back.
Lara waited a beat to ensure they’d finished. Then she asked gently, ‘So why now? Why dredge all this up again and tell Carlo about the…’ She couldn’t bring herself to say the word suicide either, just as Carlo had faltered. ‘And why give him the necklace?’ She was more than half expecting Samuel to clam up on her, to say he was tired and needed to go to bed, or to tell her outright to mind her own business. He was certainly within his rights. But apparently he recognised that the moment he’d asked her to do this task for him was the moment they’d crossed a line.
Samuel made some noises, sounding almost as though he was chewing his cud like one of his beloved goats. Lara waited, her ears straining to catch his every word. When they came his voice was quiet. ‘I held onto the necklace for Assunta’s sake when I sho
uld have given it to Giovanna long ago. Now it’s one thing I can do to set my children free from any further bitterness hanging over their heads from the rest of the family. I don’t want the family’s anger and resentment to stop Giovanna and Gaetano from coming back to Italy…if they want to. It won’t fix everything, but it’s a start.’
Lara pulled a tissue from the box next to her.
‘And as for why I would tell the truth of the story, there are so many reasons,’ he said, his voice weakening. ‘I did it for myself, selfishly. I’m tired of carrying this knowledge alone. By bearing the shame, protecting Assunta’s memory, I have paid the price of not being part of my children’s and grandchildren’s lives. I know Assunta wouldn’t have wanted that. But also I want to be able to say it out loud and tell them all that what Assunta did—taking her own life—it isn’t the great shame and sin they might have once believed it to be. It was silence around depression that killed her in the first place.’
Lara blew her nose noisily. ‘When will you tell Giovanna and Gaetano? They have to know this was not your fault, no matter what they’ve been told by the family.’
‘Soon. I will do it soon.’ Each word was heavy with his regret at having waited so long.
She almost let it go there, but it seemed the floodgates had opened, so she might as well ask. ‘Why did you throw your wedding ring into the Trevi Fountain?’
He didn’t speak for some time.
‘The Trevi Fountain has the god Oceanus in the centre.’
‘Yes.’ She remembered the towering marble statue.
‘He is the personification of the ocean. And despite the whole of this country loving Jesus, Mary and the pope, the old mythologies still run deep.’
‘Okay.’
‘The things the Catholic Church used to say about those who did what Assunta did…They said anyone who commits suicide would endure eternal damnation. It would have brought huge shame onto Assunta and the family. I wanted to protect her, our children and the rest of the family.’
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