“What do you want me to think?” he asked, picking up the photos again. “Because I see clues here, and they don’t look good. You showed up here with these. Looking for Giulio. Why?”
I couldn’t answer, couldn’t get out the words, and he went on, “You know what? I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I don’t even want to know. Just go.”
He slumped down, defeated. That smile I had always found on his face was gone, and in its place was a cold mask I couldn’t recognize.
“What are you saying?”
“Get your things and go. I don’t want you here.”
I felt myself falling apart. Everything had changed in an instant, and now I had to face the reality, a bitter reality I could have avoided if it had been just a little warmer out, or if he hadn’t opened the wrong drawer.
“Lucas, you don’t understand. You’re right that I came to Sorrento for Giulio. What you don’t know is that I think he could be my father.”
“What?” His expression changed. His eyes wide, his mouth gaping, he looked almost funny, and I might have laughed if the situation had been different. But I was shaking as he went on. “You told me you didn’t know your father.”
“I was telling the truth. All I have is these photos, some dates, and a likeness.” I blinked, wiped the tears out of my eyes, and pointed to my face. “Tell me you don’t see it.”
I slumped down on the sofa, trying to find the strength to fight off despair, as Lucas looked at the photos for what felt like an eternity. Finally, he murmured, “I don’t understand.”
“My mother told me over and over that she didn’t know who my father was. Just a stranger, she said. Then I found those photos in her things and I tried to ask her again, but she wouldn’t even answer. Giulio spent a summer in Madrid. He knew my mom. I was born nine months after that. Look at me and tell me it’s not possible.”
Lucas slowly approached the sofa, his stare shocked and confused, and sat on the opposite end. Was he still angry with me? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t tell. I continued, trying to order my thoughts, “I didn’t even think about what I was doing when I got on the plane and came here. It was an impulse. But once I did it, there was no turning back. And then, as soon as I reached town, I ran into Giulio, almost like it was fate. I followed him through the streets to a scenic lookout, where I thought I lost him, and I even asked myself if I hadn’t just imagined it. Then I saw the restaurant, thepacked patio tables, and that free table that seemed to be waiting there just for me. And then you appeared.”
Lucas glanced up at me and looked away, leaning back and pinching the bridge of his nose. I hoped he would say something, but when he didn’t, I forced myself to keep talking. I told him everything. About my family, about how my life had been in Madrid. About my relationship with my mother. I stripped myself down to the bone, confessing every fear, every yearning, every thought that had brought me to where I was then. Everything that had brought me to that couch where we were sitting next to each other, with an abyss now between us.
“Since I got here, every night when I’ve gone to bed, I’ve promised myself I’d say something to him the next day, but then I wake up and I’m scared and time keeps passing…” I looked down. “Lucas, I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone. That’s why I decided not to say anything and just leave things as they are. I was looking for a family, and I’ve found so much more than that, and I was scared of risking that and losing everything. It was my secret, just mine, and I wasn’t hurting anyone by keeping it to myself.”
“You were hurting you,” he whispered.
“Yeah, but everything else made up for it. And anyway, what if it wasn’t true? What if all this was just a bunch of coincidences and not a sign? Maybe my mother was telling the truth and my father was just some stranger who’ll never know he has a daughter.”
“Or maybe Giulio is your father and he’ll never know.”
What was he saying? That I should tell Giulio? Or that he was willing to keep my secret?
“What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him,” I said. “And it’s got nothing to do with you. It’s my thing.”
“Yeah, but now I know.”
“And you also know what it feels like when other people make decisions for you. When they take the freedom to do so away from you.”
Our eyes met, without filters, without masks, without deceptions. So close…and at the same time, so far away.
And then he stood and walked out without a word.
41
That conversation with Lucas left me exhausted and empty. It was the calm before the storm, and I knew that fragile, crumbling dam that protected me would soon fall to pieces. It was just a matter of time. And then reality would strike me mercilessly, and I didn’t know if I could take it.
I put the photos back in my drawer, took off my clothing, let it fall to the floor. Naked, I walked into the bathroom, turned on the tap, and got into the bath. I let the steam surround me. I felt weak, alone, incomplete.
When I came out wrapped in a towel, I didn’t go to Lucas’s room, where I’d slept for weeks, but to my own room, putting on a clean T-shirt and getting into bed.
The silence and the darkness settled over me, and I felt myself floating in the nothingness. A cold nothingness filling with chaotic emotions and spinning in a whirlpool of pain.
How quickly we get used to the good things! The pretty things, the nice things. Feeling complete. How soon we forget that it can all come to an end.
I hugged myself tight, feeling an agony in my chest I could hardly bear. Lucas had kicked me out. He wanted me to go. It was overbefore it started. So why did I feel like I was about to leave half my life behind?
