Unforgotten (2 page)
Is this the trouble he meant? Did the banker Arthur Jackson promise Papa a more lucrative market for our wine? I wouldn’t doubt it, but if he was there to take delivery, Papa would not have said to hide in the cellar, and someone would not have broken into our house to lie in wait… .
Don’t think it. Bad thoughts bring bad luck
.
We reach the bottom of the stairs. “Come, Non—”
My words break at a sound overhead like marbles spilled on tile, a spattering of sharp, angry snaps.
Papa!
I spin, but Nonno’s grip tightens. On his face a look of pain. “Nonno, it’s Papa. It must be.” Sobs climb my throat.
Shaking his head, he draws me on through the cellar, limping and staggering.
Papa …
Grief floods my eyes. I have to know, but Nonno won’t let go. In the canting light we grope into the arched tunnel at the end of the cellar, and I guess his intention. We’ll go out this way and—
“Nonno?”
He seizes his chest and falls against the wall, clutching his arm, then sinking to his knees.
“Nonno, what’s wrong!” I clank down the lamp and grab onto him. “Nonno, hold on. Hold on, I’ll get help.”
He clings to me and rasps, “No, Antonia. You must not be found.”
Not be found? What … Gunshots. Arthur Jackson. Reality crushes me.
“Antonia.” He works too hard for words. “Under …” He sags.
“Nonno?” I cradle his head, feeling each of his ragged breaths in the feeble rise and fall of his chest. His eyelids flutter like the slow beat of tattered butterfly wings, then close.
Upstairs something horrible has happened, and in my arms it continues.
Nonno! Papa!
But there is only the scent of fear and grief as I rock on my knees, silently keening.
There is no time in the darkness of the cellar, only the pulsing of my grief. But slowly my name penetrates, not hollered, but whispered with urgency.
Nonno?
His head is cold in my lap.
The whisper comes again, and someone steps into the lamp’s glow. Relief and confusion swirl. “Marco? What are you… ?”
“Shh.” He drops beside me, touches Nonno Quillan’s throat to learn what I know already, then meets my tear-filled gaze. “We have to go.”
“Go? I can’t leave—”
He grabs hold of my shoulders, dark eyes intense in his grim face. “There’s nothing more you can do for him.”
Where are the laughing eyes, the ardent mouth? Marco, the carefree beau. What is he doing here? “How did you get in? How did you know?” The cellar is my family’s secret. He would not just find it.
“Vittorio told me.”
Papa told Marco?
He slides Nonno’s head from my lap, folds the arms across his chest.
No. Leave him alone. Don’t pose him like a dead man
. I suck in a sob. “Papa’s been shot. I heard it.”
He pulls me to my feet. “Let’s go.”
“I have to stay.”
“You can’t.”
My hand stings with the slap. “Don’t tell me I can’t.”
He takes hold of my arm, but I swing again. Marco ducks, grabs hold of me hard, trapping my arms and hissing, “He’ll guess you saw and heard.”
“I did see!” I thrash. “Arthur Jackson—”
He plants his hand over my mouth. “Don’t say it. Don’t tell anyone what you know.” I kick and squirm, but he forces me along the tunnel to the intruder gate he has left open. I have never felt such fury.
The diary digs into my ribs as I fight. Marco tightens his arms and pushes me through the gate that closes behind us. How has he gotten so strong, so cruel? I jerk my face free and sink my teeth into his wrist, wanting to hurt him more than I have ever wanted anything before.
Sucking in a breath, he eases his flesh out of my teeth. “Believe me,
cara
. There’s no other way.”
Believe him? I don’t know him, have never seen this man who grabs hold and forces me to leave behind the ones I love. What if Papa didn’t tell him? Was it Marco in the kitchen?
Panic infuses my struggle. Exasperated, he hoists me over his shoulder, trapping my kicking legs with a bear-like grip. The diary bites into my belly as he climbs the stairs, emerging into the garage. My inverted view passes over timbers that once formed stabling partitions, tools and pails and mechanical items. Then Marco lowers me to the floor.
The moment my feet touch, I haul back and kick his knee. “How dare you!”
Wincing, he grips his leg, and I shove him hard. Arms flung wide, he falls to his back.
“Get out of my sight.” I clench my hands, wishing he couldn’t see me shaking.
Marco rolls to his feet as the door opens and Joseph Martino slips inside. Joseph won’t expect me to leave when Nonno … But he looks from me to Marco, and something passes between them, a slight shake of Joseph’s head.
“What?” What did they communicate with a head shake?
Marco limps toward me. “We have to get out of here.”
I turn to Joseph. “Nonno Quillan is dead.”
Joseph’s face twists with pain. “Quillan?”
I point to the hatch. “His heart …” My words break on a sob. Joseph will understand my pain. He will share it. And there are tears in his eyes, tears in mine. But now I see blood on Joseph’s hand.
My gaze jerks to the house. “Papa?”
Joseph blocks the door. “He’s gone, Antonia. And Marco’s right. You have to get out of here.”
A moan passes through me. They’ll find Papa and investigate. But what about Nonno? If they find the cellar with the wine, they’ll think Papa did something wrong, that he deserved to die.
But Nonno … My head spins. I couldn’t save him. The pain is suffocating, but suddenly I know. I couldn’t save his life, but I can keep his secret. “I have to bury Nonno.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Marco barks, reaching for my arm.
Shoving his hand away, I search the garage, snagging my glance on the timbers. I’ve blocked the pantry door, and that leaves only one other way in. If I block it … “The cellar will be his tomb.”
“Antonia …”
Glowering at Marco, I grab a board, haul it to the hatch and wedge it between the stairs and the underside of the floor. I turn back, but Joseph is beside me already with more. Back and forth, until the three of us press the last boards into the tangle. Sweat glistens on Marco’s forehead. I press the hatch shut, and even though the square pavers fit snugly with the rest of the floor, I’m not satisfied. “Now dirt. So no one sees the hatch.” Like a tomb lost in desert sands.
Marco grips my arm, hissing, “We don’t have time.”
Joseph takes my other hand. “Please, Antonia. Go now.” He turns and grabs a shovel. “I’ll cover the floor. No one will disturb him.” I can smell his fear.
I squeeze his hand. “Promise.”
He presses our hands to his heart. “With the loyalty I owe your Nonno Quillan, I promise I will hide and guard his resting place until you return.”
My eyes stream with tears as I stop resisting Marco’s pull. His Studebaker is directly outside the door, engine running, a great, growling beast swallowing me up as Marco presses me into the passenger seat, runs around and gets behind the wheel.
“Where are you taking me?” My voice has died with the ones I’m leaving behind.
“As far away as I can get you.” He hooks his arm over the seat and spins the car back and around.
As we hurl down the drive and away from the only home I’ve ever known, I clutch my stomach and feel the empty skirt. No diary. Marco will not turn back, I know. I must have lost it in our struggle. I press my fingers to my forehead. What difference does it make? That life is gone, that Antonia dead. As dead and gone as everything I love.
T
hey say lightning never strikes twice, but Lance hoped there was enough of the first jolt to keep things going with the woman perched stiffly in the taxi beside him. He hoped it enough to bring her home to his family, to show his underbelly; the place, the people who had formed him—and still left him vulnerable. People he loved and needed. He looked at Rese. Love and need, risky business.
As they left LaGuardia, he marveled that she had blocked out an unreserved week from the inn to accompany him, but mostly that she would accompany him at all. She’d given him a second chance, but second chance meant get it right this time or fagedda-bout-it. And what were the odds of that?
He had begun his mission alone and in secret, at the urging of Nonna Antonia. If that had remained his focus, he would have gone home without Rese, but he’d made her part of it—or she’d made him. One way or another they were in it together now. And no more secrets. This time he’d keep everything up front and do it right—or as close as he could get it. Shaky ground, but he was standing. Story of his life.
Rese stared out the window as they drove through Queens, then crossed the Triborough Bridge into the Bronx, where the scene waxed less than lovely. After living in swanky Sausalito, working only in the most elite neighborhoods in San Francisco, and purchasing her own piece of wine country Sonoma real estate, the view was no doubt a disappointment.
His Belmont neighborhood had shrunk to a quaint attraction as progeny went to college, found professional positions, and moved out to the suburbs. Not many third-generation Italian-Americans stayed close and called it home, as he had, until Nonna’s request sent him across the country to Rese’s inn. Now, although this looked like coming home, it wasn’t.
He’d found his place in Sonoma, with Rese … if he got it right this time. He’d only known her three months, but that was long compared to his folks, who had met on the dance floor where Pop proposed that same night with the memorable words, “So, I think we should get married; whatchu think?”
Proceeding through the Bronx past Pelham Parkway to Fordham Road and on into the hood, Lance glanced at Rese, who was now studying the architecture of Belmont Avenue and then Hughes, as they progressed along 186th to the four-story building his family owned. No barred windows, no graffiti, and the brick and stonework were nice, especially along the roof.
Rese was noting it all with her trained eye, but he couldn’t read her thoughts. Did she see that his family took care of the building they’d owned since the thirties? Or did she see a broken-down neighborhood clinging to its past?
The cab pulled to the curb and the driver popped the trunk. Lance stepped onto the sidewalk that had borne his chalk, his cherry bombs, and for a while, his cigarette butts. More than that, it was the spot where he and his friends had sung when they’d been sent outside to bother someone else.
“Ay, Lance.”
He turned at the call.
Frankie Cavallo hung out the window of the Mr. Softee truck, playing the music-box ditty that was the piper’s call to children far and near. “Whatchu doin’ in a cab? Where’s that bike what drowns out my music?”
Lance grinned. If that tune didn’t have such good memories attached, it would be pure torture. You had to admire a guy who could hear it all day and still call it music. Probably had no ear at all.
When Rese climbed out, Frankie raised his ridge of eyebrows. “So that’s how it is.” He winked and crawled on along the block, enticing the children with soft-serve pleasure they would never outgrow.
But the damage had been done, and Lance couldn’t help thinking of his Harley back in Rese’s workshop. He sighed. “We should have taken the bike. The road stretched out before us, the wind in our hair—”
“Wind in your hair; I wear a helmet.”
Lance hauled her duffle out and set it on the curb. “Baxter in my arms… .”
“Animal endangerment.”
His backpack next. “Did you see his face when we left him behind?”
“It was buried in Michelle’s hand.”
“She bribed him.” Poor dog. Lance felt for the animal with all his heart.
“It would have taken too long to drive. I have responsibilities.” Rese folded her arms across her chest.
They
had responsibilities. Though he was not surprised she didn’t say that. Rese looked as though she might jump back into the cab and leave him wondering if his time in Sonoma had been no more than a dream—the kind of dream that wakes you in a heart-pounding sweat, gasping
Gesù, Maria, e Giuseppe,
then plunging your head into cold water for the clean, painful shock of it. He had fallen in love with a woman who might never trust him again. That she needed his expertise was the only thing he had going.
He leaned in and paid the driver, then turned to find the strained look on Rese that brought his gaze straight to her mouth. He could soften that mouth, but when Michelle had stopped his kissing Rese in the inn’s driveway by proffering his grandmother’s lost diary, he had seen very clearly the Lord’s warning hand. He was not getting away with anything this time.
Rese gripped her duffle and slung the strap over her shoulder. He could carry it for her, but she wasn’t that kind of girl. Here in his warmly expressive neighborhood, with her marble features and stoic stance, she was as incongruous as soprasatta on rye. It had seemed right to bring her, but that presumed a facility with good decision-making and a heart that didn’t leap before his head could ask how far.
And since most everything he’d done since meeting Rese had been wrong, he was in the hole already. He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but the nature of his quest had set them at odds. Amazing how you could blind yourself when you needed something so badly it left a taste like metal in your mouth.
And he had hurt her, because he hadn’t known how to get out of what he’d started. One of these days, he’d learn what trouble looked like from the front side instead of dead center.
————
The strap of her duffle dug into her shoulder, and Rese imagined steel rods connecting her head to her spine. Why had she agreed to this? Hadn’t she learned that listening to Lance took her directions she never intended to go?
“I have to show Nonna Antonia what I’ve found, put her mind at rest. But it involves you, too, Rese. I want her to see you, to know what you’re doing with the place, what the plan is.”
As always, his idea had implanted, and now she was on the opposite end of the country with a man she knew better than to trust, yet couldn’t seem to resist.