After prayers, I kissed her goodnight and went downstairs to Luca. He was waiting for me on the front porch, smoking a pipe. I think he thought it made him look older and more sophisticated. I liked the smell of pipe tobacco, and every now and then, he’d pass it to me so as I could take a puff.
“I wish we could put a lock on Rennie’s door,” I said. It was an old request, but every once in a while, I’d bring it up again.
“I thought we’d been through that before,” he said wearily.
“We have. But what if a stranger should get into the house? He could just walk right into her room and take her while we slept.”
“Darcy, you can’t live your whole life expecting thieves and kidnappers. We have nothing anyone wants. Caroline took away everything that was worth anything and kidnappings only happen to rich children. Besides, if we locked her in, how could she get out to tell us if she was sick or had a nightmare or something?”
“Then why can’t she sleep in our room?” I persisted.
I watched him refill his pipe. “We’ve been over that too. The child likes her privacy. She doesn’t want to sleep with us. She’d rather—”
And then it happened, like a clap of thunder or the strike of a copperhead. A hand coming out of the bushes, a hand with a piece of pipe or a crowbar. Too dark to see. A lunge forward. Luca too startled to fend off his attacker, slumping forward, his pipe clattering to the porch floor. Aaron uncoiling himself. Me, starting to rise, pressed back into the chair. Then suddenly everything still again, set in our new positions, like musical chairs.
Aaron stood before me, his hands on his hips, smiling. “Nice night,” he said. “Lots of lightning bugs.”
I had to think. Think. But I was too confused. My brain scrambled to grasp what had happened, what was happening—but not what was going to happen. That was too awful to consider, and I resisted the foreknowledge even as I sensed what he’d come for.
“I’ve missed you, Darcy,” he said, resting his weight on one leg, with the other against the seat of my chair. With his foot, he rocked it. “You don’t come around the store no more. I’ve thought a lot about you these past years. Remember when we were kids?” He stopped to pick up Luca’s pipe, and finding it still smoldered, he relit it. “Remember how we used to play together. They were the best times. I knew you were mine, that you’d always belong to me. We’re alike you and I.” He smiled. “Hell, no one else ever wanted you. You were my secret and I knew no matter how long I was gone, I could count on you waiting for me.” The smile left his face. “You oughtn’t to have married him. He’s a stranger here, and not like us. We’re different. We’re tough and we know it. We make people bend to us, even if we have to bully them to do it. You ought not have married,” he repeated. “Why’d you do it?”
The power to speak had not returned yet, and I could only stare at him in silent terror.
“Why?” His face twisted in rage and he reached out to prod me with the length of metal.
“I—I love him.”
Sudden laughter. “Well, I think you’re a widow now.” He motioned in Luca’s direction and before he could stop me, I went to the still form. Quickly, Aaron wrenched me to my feet but not before I felt the subtle rise of Luca’s chest. He was still breathing.
“Get upstairs.” Aaron poked me with the pipe.
“What do you want with me?” I asked, but of course I knew.
The grin spread across his face. “What I’ve wanted since we were ten years old,” he said. “Now get up those steps or I’ll go alone…to see that little girl of yours.”
The mention of Rennie propelled me forward. “Leave her. She’s a baby.”
Again, soft laughter behind me. “Not such a baby. You weren’t all that much older when you started running this place.”
We had reached her door now. “Please,” I said in a last effort.
“Open it.”
I could hear her breathing as he pushed me towards the bed. Looking down at her sleeping, my own breath caught. Aaron looked down at her, too, and there was a tenderness in his expression that was at odds with all I knew him to be. “Beautiful child,” he said. “Looks just like the Eye-talian. If I’d had a face like that, there’s no telling what I could have been in this life.”
He bent and touched her dark hair. She stirred and called, “Mama,” rubbing her eyes sleepily.
“It’s all right,” he said soothingly. “I just come for your mama and I’ll be on my way. You go back to sleep.”
He pulled the coverlet up to her neck and then his eyes came up to meet mine. “Where’s your bedroom?” I didn’t answer. “You’re shaking.” He seemed surprised. “Are you afraid of me, Darcy?”
“Yes.”
“You never were before.”
I flinched as he raised his hand to brush a strand of hair from my face. “I didn’t have Luca and my girl then.”
He nodded sympathetically. “Takes all your courage away to have something to lose. Just the opposite with me.” He began pushing me out of Rennie’s room and down the hall. “I guess I’m ’bout as courageous as a man can be. This it?”
I didn’t answer but some sick intuition must have told him so because he pushed me through the door, to stand square in front of me, feet apart, eyes squinting appraisingly. “You grew up
