“She’s all right.” I could see it coming and I wished for a way to put him off. If only I’d been born with Jolene’s ability to talk a dog off a meat wagon. She’d have double talked him until he forgot all about babies. It was probably only the full-cut dress that had saved me so far.
“Does she ask about me much?”
“Always,” I answered without letting him capture my eyes.
“And what do you tell her?”
“Not much. That you had to go away for a while.” I glanced at him. He wasn’t as I remembered. He looked like a defeated old man instead of one in his prime.
In a troubled voice, he said, “That may satisfy her now, but in a year or two, she’ll want to know more.”
“No, she won’t,” I said, happy to be able to ease his anxiety, at least in this. “She’ll have forgotten by then.” And as soon as it was out of my mouth, I knew. The way his face fell, making him look so profoundly old, I knew. “I didn’t mean—I only meant that when they’re little they forget so quickly.”
He shook his head, as if to shake off the hurt. “It’s all right.”
We were quiet for a while after that, not the nice kind of quiet we had once known together at the inn when we were too content for speech. This was the kind of quiet that makes the mind scramble for words that don’t come, and try as we did, we could not fill the silence that divided us as much as the metal grate. If only I could have touched him. If only we could have lain together, everything might have been confessed and forgiven. That was how it had always been with us. Unable to say the things we felt, our bodies had still been eloquent. If only there was no grate between us. All we could have touched was fingertips and that would have made us too pitiful to ourselves,so we each raised a hand only to stop just short of contact.
“You don’t look well to me,” he said at last. “You should have gained more weight by now. You were much bigger with Rennie.”
Avoiding his eyes was no longer possible, and when I slowly raised mine, his were filled with such tenderness and concern that I had to look away again. He didn’t suspect, would never suspect what I had done. For Luca, it was a thing too terrible to be even remotely possible.
“I’m not pregnant,” I said. There was nothing left to say. His face didn’t change immediately. Added to the concern was only a quizzical look, as if what I’d said made no sense. “…I’m sorry. There just isn’t any baby anymore.”
The truth came to him slowly and he would put off comprehending as long as possible. “You had an accident?”
Why couldn’t I lie as I had done the night Aaron came to the porch? That lie had rolled off my tongue easily enough: Aaron hadn’t hurt me, I’d said. Why couldn’t I lie then, at the prison? Why couldn’t I say that I had slipped on the stairs? Or had a sudden pain? No. I was a liar but not an indiscriminate liar. I’d lied about Aaron because the truth would have been unlivable. I would tell the truth about the baby because the lie would be unlivable. I shook my head, no.
“Then I don’t understand.”
Staring down at my lap, I hoped to find something inscribed there for me to say. “There’s a woman…” I began. “She lives in the woods around Galen and she…takes care of women who—”
His hand came down on the counter with such force that the guard stationed by the door turned toward us. “No!” He said the word to silence me, as if keeping it from being told would keep it from being true. His whole body quivered, like a lightning-struck tree before it’s brought down forever. “You’re lying. You wouldn’t do that. You couldn’t.”
“I did.”
He sank to the bench slowly, holding the grate for support, and I wanted more than anything to hold him in my arms—for it was my tragedy, too—and tell him how very sorry I was, how for me, no night was absent dreams of that unborn child. But it was I who had done it, and I knew I was the last person he would take comfort from. I couldn’t stand to see him like that—so aware of his powerlessness, his bitter understanding that he could do nothing to affect life beyond the grate.
More wrenching than the angry words was the pleading that followed. “Please, Darcy, tell me. Tell me you didn’t.” Then he began to cry.
“I can’t,” I said. It was too late to lie. Though belatedly, I realized that the truth was just as unlivable as the lie would have been. From here, there was nowhere for us to go. I knew that, and with that knowledge came other knowing. Luca would not come back to me. He would go back to Italy to see if he could find something left of warmth, of welcome, of loving familiarity, of goodness and dignity.
Tearing into my thoughts, he sprang up at me with a savagery that was no part of the man I’d known. Clenching his fingers through the grate, he willed me to look at him, and when I did, I saw a feeling so raw it scared me, a hate so personal that I shrank from him, afraid the grate might not hold.
“What if Jewel had done what you did?” he said, his blue eyes shot with blood and tears.
“I wish she had,” I said quietly.
“I wish that too.” He changed then into someone I did not know, and yet had oddly created, someone not quite human who suffered an animal kind of anguish, undiluted with any thought of salvation. He didn’t have to say it. I already knew, had known even before today. But he gave it
