It took him five minutes to search the entirety of the suite, even going as far as looking under the bed. He tactfully, again, pretended to ignore the shredded slip on the floor, and the bed, which looked like hurricane had hit it.
Feeling secure that he was leaving me alone to talk to myself, he wished mebuona notteand then shut the door behind him.
His recon of the room did nothing for my nerves. In fact, they were getting worse, building into something I wasn’t sure I could control.
Going back to the window, I stared out, willing my weak eyes to penetrate the darkness and see more than flecks of continual snow.
A flash of light strobed through the air, and a glimmer of a silhouette stretched on the white ground before disappearing again.
Was that one of the men’s flashlights?
It happened again, and this time I made the sign of the cross, kissing the cross around my neck, pleading for God to help me. If Brando hadn’t set the chair where he had, I would have been on the floor.
The face of a man was illuminated for a split second before it faded into the darkness.
Was it an effing ghost?
My hands grew clammy and my knees weak. I’d seen a ghost before. The ghost of my grandfather, the Italian painter Maja had an illicit love affair with. An affair that had produced my mother. He came to me on my wedding night, on a snowy hill in the Slovenian mountains, a flare of lightning exposing him to me.
There was a difference though. That ghost had left no footprints; this one did.
Brando’s words from the other day at the park echoed inside of my head.Every living thing leaves a print.
“Yes! Son of a bitch! But why?”
I was so stupefied by the idea that Burgess was still alive, and not in ash form, that I almost forgot to get the knife Brando kept hidden underneath his pillow. I tucked it in the side of the wool sock, hoping the bulge wasn’t noticeable.
After, I stopped for a moment, took a deep breath, and told myself that I was going absolutely insane.
Why would Burgess fake his own death? And what did Cesare have to do with him? It made no sense.
Because I wasn’t sure what I could trust or not, I wondered if what I’d seenwashis ghost.
It was a lot better than the alternative.
Burgess didn’t feel dead to me though. My feelings were all pointing in his direction, screaming,That’s what we were trying to tell you!The man we thought was dead was, in fact, alive.
Looking back, it made sense, but what made no sense at all—why?
For a split second, all my senses going haywire, I thought about Eunice in the room with my daughter.
Was she in cahoots with this man?
Phone records proved that she hadn’t been in touch with him, and she never went anywhere alone. Brando wasn’t one to take chances, so he kept close watches on the people closest to us.
I loved Eunice—she had helped raise me, and her family before her helped raise my father, grandfather, and so forth—but when it came down to the safety of my daughter or my husband, I wouldn’t hesitate to end her life if she was aiding this man in whatever his plan was, and somehow my daughter or husband were part of the mix.
“No.” I shook my head. My feelings weren’t wrong there.
She had no idea. He had faked his death and told no one. Not even her. Toward the end of their marriage, she had started leaving him more often, claiming that she wanted to be closer to Mia. I felt it had more to do with all the traveling Burgess did with his boxer. It wore her out, not only because the schedule was rigorous, but because it seemed like her heart wasn’t in it.
It seemed like neither one of them wanted to give up their posts in life for each other.
Life had given Burgess a second wind, and he was taking it. Mia had given Eunice hers, and she was loath to part from her little doll.
Was that why Burgess faked his death? To get back at us for his wife leaving him when he felt he needed her more than we did?
Insensible words came out of my mouth, something likegajabajaba,when another knock came at the door, and then it swung open. This time it was Guido.
