31
I’M ALREADY ATthe end of the street before Sofia and Roger have noticed I’ve left, but Leo is on the case right away, telling me to stay there as he scurries back toward them to explain. I don’t know what he’s saying. I don’t know what he could say. I keep walking and don’t look back.
My bag is bulging from a hasty packing, and my eyes are red from the last hour of crying while Leo sat beside me, swearing and muttering to himself. I did not want him to speak. I do not want to know what he knows anymore. I already feel too betrayed to take any more betrayal.
I watch as the water taxi Leo ordered me chugs to the pier, and the driver waves me toward him. Leo is coming with me, although I don’t want him to.
“Olive, wait,” I hear him say as I toss my bag onto the back of the taxi.
“You should stay and finish the book,” I say, unable to look him in the eye. “You were right about the beans anyway. It should have been just you doing the book. It should have been all you, Leo. All of it.”
“Stop that,” he says.
“Please don’t come,” I say. “This is between my mother and me. It will be fine. I just need some answers.”
“I want to make sure you’re okay,” he says, telling the driver in Italian to take us to Santa Margherita and tohurry. Leo is carrying the ashes. I refuse to touch them.
I don’t have the energy to argue. My mind is swimming. The questions too numerous to know where to begin.
When did they meet?
Why wasn’t I told?
Who even is my real father?
“You don’t know anything for sure,” was all Leo kept saying. “Wait and talk to your mother.”
I keep staring at the bag with the ashes. I want to toss them overboard and have them sink to the bottom of the ocean, inside the urn.
“Leo,” I say. “Can you pass them to me? The ashes? I want to throw them into the sea.”
“You want to do it now, from the back of a taxi boat?”
“I don’t want to lug them all the way home. I’m never coming back here. I hate it. I want to go home,” I say.
“You don’t like Italy?” the driver asks, shouting over his shoulder. Leo whispers something in his ear, and he nods, glancing back at me with a look of concern.
“Don’t you see? I’m not even Italian,” I say, shaking my head. “Give them to me.”
“No,” he says sharply.
“Yes,” I reply, reaching out my hand. I watch as his mouth tightens into a line, and he appears to want to protest, but then his body slumps and he swings the bag off his shoulder.
“Fucking monkey on my back for weeks,” I say, snatching it off him and pulling the urn out. “Why did he wantmeto do it, anyway?”
My heart tugs at the feeling that as soon as Mum and Dad split, he just let me go.He didn’t need to deal with me anymore.And then it swings to the other idea. The one I feel is the real truth: that he loved me with everything in his heart, and when my parents split, he felt he didn’t have the right to demand more from me. That he was too scared to tell me the truth in case he lost me forever. I feel my stomach turn at the thought of it. The awful, upsetting, heartbreaking thought.
I can’t open the fucking urn. I try to twist the round lid, then I try flicking it open, breaking a nail in the process.
“Fuck,” I say, sucking on my thumb.
Then I put a little more pressure on the lid and hear something give, a dull snapping sound, and then it comes off easily in my hand. Inside there is a plastic bag sealed with a white tag.
I cannot handle this being all that is left of my dad. A thick plastic bag, stuffed inside an urn. The tears come again, and my head slumps forward.
“I hate this,” I say, crying.
“It’s okay, Olive,” says Leo, taking the urn back from me as the boat approaches the pier. “Why don’t I keep it until you know what you’re doing.”
