“Benedetta, look at me. I see truth, and there is too much good in you to do this. Look at me.”
Bennie couldn’t look at her. She knew it was crazy. She was listening to a crazy woman having a crazy conversation, but she felt as if she were talking to her mother. She felt as if she were talking to herself. She was in a sort of dream, or spell, or maybe it was the pills, but none of it mattered any longer.
“Benedetta, look at me.”
“No.” Bennie was lost now, even to herself. She couldn’t come back. She had crossed the line. Tears slid down her cheeks. “I’m not good. Not anymore.”
“Yes, you are.” The woman took Bennie’s face in her hand and turned it toward her own. “I see you.”
Suddenly Bennie started to cry, hoarse, choking sobs. She felt like she was breaking down, out of control. All her emotions came flooding out, and she was unlocked, her soul set free. She was surrendering to something, and she didn’t know what, or who. The crazy woman. Her mother. Herself.
“I see you, Benedetta. See yourself, in my face. I look at you, like a mother. I see you, like a mother. Do you see the goodness here, and the love?”
And as impossible as it seemed, the woman was smiling at her, full of love, channeling her very mother, and in the next second Bennie felt herself collapse in the woman’s arms.
Police sirens blared near the alley, breaking the spell, and Bennie came to her senses.
Alice was climbing the wall and getting away.
“No!” Bennie shouted, raising a hand. But her gun was gone somehow, and Fiorella kept a firm grip on her arm.
“Let her go. She is dead already.”
Bennie heard the truth in her words, and it made her feel that she could come back, and that she already had, and she could become herself again. Because she had remembered who she really was inside, the little girl her mother had loved, all her life.
Benedetta Rosato.
And when she looked up, Alice was gone.
Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-seven
Bennie sat in a hard chair, alone in her third interview room, in almost as many days. She’d spent the night in a smelly holding cell, but the Bahamian police had fed her eggs for breakfast and fried fish for lunch, and they’d gotten her hands rebandaged, so she felt herself again. It was Tuesday afternoon, and she hadn’t had any more pills, which helped, too.
She was waiting for the cops to formally release her, and her gaze wandered idly over the mint green walls, beat-up black chairs, and a metal table covered with old newspapers, blank forms, and a 2007 Nassau telephone directory. There were bars on the window, and through them she could see it was beautiful outside. A tropical sun beamed onto a windowsill cluttered with files and an old-fashioned ink pad, for taking fingerprints.
She’d been talking to the cops for hours, because under Bahamian law they could question her for forty-eight hours, with extensions to seventy-two and ninety-six hours, which turned out to be unnecessary. She’d used her phone call to contact the Philadelphia office of the FBI, who had called the American consulate. The consulate official had gotten her a Bahamian criminal lawyer, and he’d blessed her cooperating with the authorities.
So the cops had read her “a caution,” their equivalent of Miranda warnings, and she’d convinced them that she’d shot the big man in self-defense, especially since eyewitnesses had seen him attack her and reported that he’d run away after he’d been shot. A search of doctors and the hospital hadn’t been able to find him, and under Bahamian law, if they didn’t have a complainant, they couldn’t charge her, anyway. She would be fined on the weapons charge and for illegally entering the country, and in the meantime, her bank accounts had been safely transferred back to USABank. The cops were still looking for Alice, based on statements from Fiorella and one Julie Cosgrove of BSB, but Bennie knew her sister would never be found.
The door to the interview room opened, and a cop in a white pith helmet stuck his head inside. He had on the smart black-and-red uniform of the Royal Bahamian Police, with a gold crown at the epaulets. “Miss Rosato?” he said.
“Yes, Officer?” Bennie rose. “May I go now?”
“Yes. Your lawyer is here, to escort you.”
“My lawyer?” Bennie repeated, puzzled. “I sent him home. I can take it from here.”
“Ms. Rosato?” called a familiar voice, and in the next second, Grady walked into the interview room, wearing a gray suit, a tie, and the widest smile on the planet.
“Hi, what are you doing here?” Bennie let an awkward moment pass. She wasn’t about to throw herself into his arms, and Grady must have picked up on her feelings, because he didn’t move to hug her.
“Of course I’d come. You have my Amex card, remember?”
Bennie laughed. “Uh-oh. I think I shot it.”
Grady laughed with her, then his expression turned serious. “Did they treat you well? Are you okay?”
“Fine.”
“I see you got your hand fixed up.”
“For now. I have to go to an orthopedist, when I get home.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Nah.”
“I couldn’t stand it if you were hurting, after all you’ve been through.”
“I’m really fine,” Bennie answered, touched. “I’m just waiting on the paperwork.”
“I’ve got tickets to take you back today, and they’ll let you fly without your passport, clear through to Philadelphia. It’s all been greased by the FBI. They also talked to the Pellesburg police, who found the box, so they know the truth. They’re not charging you with anything.”
“Good.”
“She buried you alive?” Grady’s gray eyes went the color of steel behind his glasses. “It’s inhuman that she would do that to you. You must have been scared out of your mind.”
“That’s not the worst part, really.” Bennie tried to shrug it off, but couldn’t. She’d done a lot of thinking last night, even for the short time she was behind bars. “The worst part is how much it changed me. I never thought I could be as evil as Alice. I didn’t think I had that in me. But it turns out that I do.”
“Who knows, maybe all of us do. Maybe any one of us, pushed to the brink, is capable of evil. Or at least revenge.” Grady’s voice softened. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. Don’t judge yourself. No one else does, least of all me.”
“Thanks.” Bennie managed a smile, but it felt so strange to be standing here, talking with him. She flashed on being back in the box, thinking that if she ever got out alive, she’d tell him how she felt. But for some reason, the words weren’t coming to her lips.
“I do have something to say, though. I’m standing here with you now, looking at you, and I can’t believe I ever mistook her for you.” Grady frowned, bewildered. “I cannot believe I was fooled so easily, and I’m sorry. You must think I’m a complete idiot.”
“No, not at all,” Bennie said, as his words struck home. “We hadn’t seen each other in a while, and if I’d let people get closer to me, especially you, then this never would have happened. So it’s my fault, really. I know that now.”
“Well, then.” Grady’s features softened, and he cocked his head. “I propose we start over, and get to know each other better. What do you say? I’d like to give us a second chance.”
“So would I.” Bennie couldn’t say more, except to throw her arms around Grady and relax into his embrace like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Because, suddenly, it was.
