In the car I resist the urge to look back. I won’t ever be back here, and within a year, there will be a golf club instead of a vineyard.
My gaze falls on the knuckles of my right hand, still clenched, red, and bruised with crusts of dried blood.
I don’t feel the pain. I’m completely numb with anger.
I’m only sure of one thing: I plan to send money for Linda to Mariana. Elisa would never accept it, but her mother is too practical not to.
As for the rest, there’s nothing else here that concerns me.
50
Elisa
I find Linda sitting on the old swing, dragging her feet in the dirt.
I remember when I pushed her when she was little, her plump little legs dangling in the air as she shouted “Higher, higher” with each flight.
On the way between the villa and the annex, I dried the one cowardly tear that escaped me, but I forced myself not to shed any more. Michael doesn’t deserve them, and my daughter shouldn’t see me like this.
“Love ...” I say, approaching her.
“You’re a liar!” she accuses me without hesitation.
“Listen, I’ll tell you everything.” I try to convince her.
“If you’re here to tell me more lies, you can save your breath, I don’t believe you anymore.”
I sit in front of her on the ground, on my knees, and from here I see how her gaze has the same light and the same edge as Michael’s. Cruel genetics. “It’s true, I wasn’t honest, but did you really want me to tell you terrible things about your father and how he behaved toward us?”
“Better the ugly truth than a beautiful lie.”
“Clichés are all fine and good, but I was just trying to give you the happiest and most peaceful life possible. How old are you now?”
“Thirteen and a half,” she states, as if that half year made all the difference.
“In three years how old will you be?”
“Sixteen and a half.”
“And how long does three years seem to you?”
“Well, considering the average lifespan of an Italian woman is eighty-four, and three years is three-point-five-seven percent of eighty-four, I’d say it’s not that long,” she surmises. She’s always been good at arithmetic. I stopped helping with her math homework in third grade.
“That’s right, it’s not long,” I confirm. “Can you imagine becoming a mother in three years?”
Her eyes widen and she shakes her head. “No, I’m too young.”
“I was too, but that’s what happened to me. And sadly, the person who would have had the immense privilege of being your father abandoned me. He abandoned us. He didn’t want to have anything to do with us. I had to choose between telling you the truth at the risk of making you feel rejected or telling you that he died before you were born. I wanted you to grow up certain that you were loved.”
“But you didn’t want me either. I was an accident.”
“From the moment I heard your little heart beating, that thrumming in my belly, I wanted you more than life itself. Does it really make that much of a difference knowing that your real father was a womanizer?”
“No,” she moans, “but now that I know, I can see why you’ve always been so strict with me.”
“Protective,” I correct her. “I know the same thing won’t happen to you. You’re smarter than I was, but making sure you’re never hurt, not even by mistake, has been my mission since I held you for the first time.”
“But would you ever let me study abroad?”
