Unforgotten

by Kristen Heitzmann

  “You know it.” He’d made it as clear as he could.

  Their fingers slipped apart. She had to go. It was the right thing. He’d withheld the probable details of Star’s ordeal from Rese, things he suspected given her diminutive size and fragility. If Rese couldn’t imagine someone drugging her, she didn’t need to contemplate worse.

  Thank God Star hadn’t fought them about leaving. She must have been scared enought to let go. He and Chaz had contended with something the other night, something with teeth. He wasn’t sure they were through, but for tonight, at least, he prayed it was enough.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Star had not spoken one word in the two days they’d been back.

  She had alternately slept and raged, but she would not say anything when Rese tried to talk it out. Now she sat shaking and silent in the Rain Forest room, sipping tea through a straw. She’d eaten three times in two days, gorging like a wolf, then losing it all.

  Not even her terrible cooking could be blamed for that, Rese told herself as she set down a saucer of Minute rice that for once had not come out like glue. “Try this.”

  A metallic odor hovered over Star. She looked up with brittle eyes. “Thanks.”

  Surprised, Rese sat down on the bed across from her. She hadn’t expected a response, but she could see by her heightened color that Star might talk and be better for it. She waited without prodding.

  “He said I had ‘it’—that thing that makes a star.”

  “Who said that?”

  “Faust.”

  Right. “And who is Faust?”

  Star’s face pinched. “Someone I believed.”

  Rese sighed.

  “He watched me sing and dance. He said I could be a star, and that’s all I’ve ever wanted—to be … Star. You know? To really be Star.” Her voice cracked.

  Rese didn’t know what to say. None of the things she’d told her in the past had made a lasting difference. And the one thing that might last had set her off. So she said, “I’m sorry.”

  Star rubbed the needle marks on her arm, frowning.

  “Lance thinks he drugged you.”

  “With what?”

  “He was guessing heroin.”

  Star emitted a whine and gripped the fragments of hair that looked as though they’d been hacked off with a handsaw.

  “It’s out of you now. It’s all out.” At least her tremors and hysteria, stomach issues and fatigue seemed to have subsided.

  Rese stood and moved Star’s hands, then smoothed the strands with gentle strokes. No more rosy spirals. “What happened to your hair?”

  Star jumped up. “I thought there was something in it. I felt things crawling.” She shuddered.

  Hard to say whether she’d imagined or acquired something. Rese didn’t want to think where Star had slept those five days she was gone.

  “They kept crawling, and there was a knife, so I cut them out.”

  Thank God it was only hair she’d cut.

  “Faust was incensed.” Star gripped her throat. “He said my hair was his. That I’d cheated him.”

  Cheated him? “Someone thinks she owes him.” Star had picked some winners, but Faust—or whatever his name was—must have topped the list.

  “He charged at me, but I had the knife. I reached the door.” She started to shake.

  Lance was right. Someone like that might have come after her. Rese took her hands and sat her down on the bed.

  Star curled up and moaned. “This most loathe`d life. Why can’t it end?”

  “Shh.” Rese soothed her like a child.

  “The worst thing—” Star sucked in a sob—“is they’re gone.”

  “Who?”

  “The fairies. The colors.”

  Her hand stilled on Star’s head.

  “I looked for them, Rese. I looked so hard. Maybe it was the drugs, I don’t know.” Tears were rushing, and her words poured out in gasps. “But I had to face it all without them.”

  Rese chilled. “Face what?”

  “Everything they did to me, Faust and the others.” Star started to shake. “I looked and looked, but they didn’t come, Rese. They weren’t there.”

  Rese could hardly breathe as a thought took hold. “Is that why you do it, Star? To see the fairies?”

  “I need to know they’re there. To see the colors.”

  So Lance was wrong. It wasn’t for the pain or for the sex, but to produce the effect, to trigger her imagination or … Her throat squeezed. She’d been willing to think maybe angels came, or some manifestation of the Lord taking a form Star recognized. But God wouldn’t lure her into being used just to experience it.

  A heaviness filled her limbs as she heard Chaz’s voice binding spirits, saw Lance lost in prayer at such an intense level she’d been afraid for him. Had they blocked Star’s “fairies”? Beings that “comforted” her when her body was abused, but made her seek the abuse to find them?

  She squeezed Star’s hand. “Maybe it’s better.”

  Tears washed her eyes. “How can it be?”

  Rese stroked the ragged tips that would curl as they grew but now stood out in peaks like a harvested field. “Because without them you’re Star. You shine.”

  Star closed her eyes. Her shoulders rose and fell as she tottered on the brink of sobs. Then sleep descended. Rese took the rice down to the refrigerator, went to her own suite, and called Lance.

  He had phoned the first night to tell her Rico was relieved and furious and melancholy. But she could hear his relief and guessed Rico would put it all behind him. Chaz sent his prayers and told her to stay on guard, whatever that meant.

  The second night Lance had called to say Momma was in an uproar. How could he send her back alone? What was so important with Nonna, so mysterious that he risked his future and her grandbabies? He had imitated her scolding so accurately that Rese laughed aloud, then missed him so much it hurt.

  Michelle had also brought Baxter home. And what a comfort it was to have Lance’s dog, partly as surety for Lance, but mostly for Baxter’s sweet self. As she pressed the buttons, she looked at Baxter lying inside on the small rug beside her bed and smiled. Guests were just going to have to deal with it.

  Lance answered and she said, “Hi.”

  “No fair. I wanted to call you.”

  “It’s an equal opportunity world.”

  He laughed. “I swear Lancelot had an easier time romancing Guinevere.”

  “And look where it got him.”

  “I was hoping you hadn’t read the story.”

  “I saw the movie.”

  “Which version?”

  “They all end pretty much the same.”

  “Okay, bad example.”

  She laughed.

  “You can’t be ready for bed this early.”

  “Thought I’d save you waiting until midnight.”

  “I like talking you to sleep, having you under my control.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Okay. Pop offered me a job.”

  Her breath caught and refused to find any sort of rhythm.

  “Someone’s retiring, and Pop recommended me for the position. Rese?”

  “He must believe you can do it. That’s great, Lance.” He’d wanted rings and a robe.

  “I told him I had a position already, as soon as I finished with Nonna.”

  The air pushed out in a flood.

  “You didn’t think I’d take it, did you?” There was laughter in his voice.

  “Lance Michelli …”

  “Wish I could see your face.”

  “You’d be seeing my back.”

  “I’d be rubbing your back.”

  The rush that turned her to jelly was not fair. “Lance, I called you for a reason.”

  “You’ve replaced me with a Mexican maid?”

  “Stop it.”

  “What’s up?” His tone sobered.

  She told him about Star. “It was you and Chaz, wasn’t it
.”

  “The power is God’s, Rese. We only wielded it.”

  “But what do I do if—Lance, she’s not happy they’re gone.”

  “Listen to me. Satan wants you to doubt, but you can stand in the gap for Star.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Pray for her.”

  “She’ll go ballistic.”

  “Pray silently. Lay hands when she’s asleep. She’s crying out for help, Rese, or she wouldn’t have come back to you, knowing you believe.”

  Rese sank back against the pillows. “I don’t think I can do that. I saw you.”

  “Forget about that.”

  Right. Like she could forget Lance beside her, gripped by something so deep he had to recover.

  “Just keep praying for her protection.”

  “What will that do?”

  “Keep them away.”

  “What if she goes looking for them?” Rese stroked Baxter, who’d brought his snout up to the bed.

  “Pray even harder. If we keep them bound, she’ll find no reward in the pain.”

  “Won’t it hurt more?” Baxter brought his front paws up on the bed and lowered his head between them. She rubbed his neck and shoulders.

  “It has to hurt, or she’ll keep looking for comfort there instead of finding it in people like you and Rico.”

  “Rico!”

  Baxter raised his head and licked her hand.

  “Rico didn’t touch her, and believe me, that took an effort. He brought her into his music, his soul. He read her sonnets in the park!”

  She hadn’t thought of that. Maybe Lance was right. She remembered Rico’s face the night they went looking, the stark hope in his eyes. Star had burned him. But was it all her fault?

  She pressed a hand to her face, then startled when Baxter leaped onto the bed, snuggling up against her, plunking his shaggy head across her waist.

  “What? What happened?”

  She laughed. “You didn’t tell me Baxter was a snuggler.”

  “What?”

  “He just climbed into bed with me.”

  “No way.”

  “So I’m imagining this big shaggy thing sprawled up against me?”

  Baxter licked her hand as real as anything.

  “You have him in your room?”

  “Quite.”

  “And he climbed into your bed.”

  “Leaped is more like it.”

  “He knows better than that. Put him on the phone.”

  She held the phone out to Baxter and heard Lance’s, “Baxter, down.”

  Baxter whined, looking at her with soulful eyes. She stroked his head. “It’s okay.”

  “Rese!”

  She brought the phone back to her ear. “The damage is done. He likes it here.”

  “Tell him to get down.”

  “You’re jealous.” She heard his expelled breath and bit her lower lip.

  “You’re undoing my training.”

  “You’ll have to get out here before he’s completely spoiled.”

  “Rese.”

  “Go to sleep, Lance. I have a dog who needs attention.”

  He growled. Lance, not Baxter. She hung up the phone and snuggled down beside the animal. She hadn’t dreamed of letting him into her bed, but took wicked pleasure in it now. “Yes.” She rubbed Baxter’s ears. “That Lance better get here soon, huh, buddy?” Baxter sighed hugely, and she laughed.

  ————

  Alone on the anniversary of my wedding to Marco, with our firstborn in my arms and a dose of self-pity, I think of Nonna Carina, of the violence she suffered, the baby she lost. Carina Maria DiGratia married Quillan Shepard in a mining camp in the Rocky Mountains. She married for protection a man she half feared, who, for fear, deserted her.

  And I think of Nonno Quillan loving her until his dying breath, the regret of that early desertion torturing him, even though he’d loved her thoroughly all the years after.

  A tear drops to Celestina’s fingers coiled around my own. I draw them up and dry them on my cheek. She suckles in her dream, her lips sinking and puckering, the tiny chin bobbing up and down, content as I rock her back and forth, back and forth, her neck sweaty in the crook of my arm. “We are not deserted,” I tell her. I tell myself.

  Footsteps. I blink away my tears. Momma Michelli hands me a telegram, her face sending one of its own, judging my weakness to need and expect such extravagance from her son. She waits expectantly, but I outwait her, and she leaves. Awkwardly around the baby, I unseal and open it.

  KNOW THIS DAY HOLDS MIXED EMOTIONS. WISH I WAS THERE TO HOLD YOU. LA MIA VITA ED IL MIO AMORE. MARCO.

  Eyes closed, I press his message to my heart. There is the grief of Papa’s murder, of Nonno’s death, and all my loss. The memory of a rushed and confused ceremony. There’s also Marco and something more real than words. When my voice can break through the tears in my throat, I tell Celestina, “See, cara? Papa’s here… .”

  Bolstered by the memory, Antonia said, “I’m r … eady.”

  “Good.” Lance flipped the pages, eager, she knew, to be done with it, now that Rese was back in Sonoma. She knew the ache of absence. She wouldn’t keep him. He was right to find his own way, to follow his heart. He’d lived too much for other people and not enough for himself.

  “The Bureau made our hasty wedding possible without papers, verifying for the judge my identity and the necessity of our union. They may have thought you would testify, or at least realized we owed you protection. For my part, the role became real. Hadn’t planned on that, my girl. You had a way of turning the tables, and how.”

  There now. That was Marco. A smile played on her lips.

  “Though I left you alone too often and too long, you were never far from my heart. It made everything I did more perilous, for now I had something to lose. With each child the burden grew, yet I knew I was doing what I had to, what I was born to. God had made me for it. To crush the violence, the decadence. To give my children a better life, and you a safer home.

  “For that I took whatever assignment I was given. I won’t tell you all the cases I handled, but the one that matters happened before I went to Sonoma. It followed me there and caused it all, though I didn’t know.”

  ————

  Lance paused, reread the sentence to make sure. It fit with the letter from Sybil that what went wrong in Sonoma started with Nonno Marco, not Vittorio or Arthur Jackson. Someone had gone to Jackson, someone who sold his services as a hit man.

  “And now it comes to why I am telling you what I’ve kept silent our whole life together.”

  Lance looked at Nonna, who had grown frighteningly still. He would burst if they had to stop, but he’d stop if she needed to. She gave him a slow blink of assent.

  “I’d blamed myself for Vittorio’s death, but only tactically, for not getting there in time once I realized the trap was set. It puzzled me that Jackson had seen through us, and I could only think that Vittorio had slipped. But it wasn’t Vittorio.”

  She closed her eyes, and pain creased her brow. He went on.

  “One of my first assignments was to infiltrate the fledgling New York Camorra.”

  His breath escaped. He and Pop had guessed right.

  “Being a paesano and, in fact, related to the family, I was an obvious candidate to penetrate the operation. I had no record to speak of that Don Agosto might discover. I was young enough to look hungry, bold enough to look useful. He took me on and put me to work accepting payoffs. You’ll recall the incident with my two-legged dog.”

  He’d heard stories of the two-legged dog, but not in connection to any covert assignments.

  “Not everyone appreciated the protection those payoffs bought them, and I took the brunt of their anger. But I was establishing myself. For two years I worked in the organization, gaining trust and responsibility, biding my time. I communicated what I had to, but kept most of what I saw and learned to myself. I trusted no one else, knowing we would have o
ne chance only with someone like Agosto Borsellino.”

  Lance read how his nonno had taken down the Camorra don, sending him to prison, but that in prison the man had been killed by the rival Sicilians who’d been waiting their chance at the Camorra boss who’d invaded their territory. It was right out of the history books, or the movies.

  “Bitter over his father’s murder, Don Agosto’s son Carlo followed me to Sonoma. He … killed your papa, but it was me he wanted.”

  He looked up, certain Nonna would make him stop. Her eyes had closed; her brow pinched in. But she said nothing, so he continued.

  “You were still Jackson’s target; I had no doubt of that. But I didn’t know until I shot Carlo in the gully that it was my actions, not Vittorio’s, that had brought us down. More than ever it was my duty to protect you. You were so brave, so determined, and as God is my witness, I’d fallen in love with you. But, darling Antonia, I forgot the power of vendetta.”

  Vendetta. Lance had joked about it, teased Rese with the idea. Now he realized it was no joke.

  Nonna said, “Read.”

  “Don Agosto’s second son, Paolo, had disappeared following a highly publicized murder. That bought me a window of time to plan my strategy before his brother’s death would bring him out of hiding. Though I knew him to be ruthless, I prayed other factors would work in my favor.

  “And God was faithful. Paolo Borsellino had to battle for control when he returned. He had no time to take up a failed vendetta with his own power at stake. Don Agosto had not favored his second son, and revenge did not burn in Paolo as it had in Carlo.

  “When I suggested a truce, he realized the advantage. I would not reveal what I knew of him or his dealings to the Bureau, and he would not threaten me or my family. It was in both our interests to keep our pact, and I was convinced he would. It rankled to see him establish his power, to know his means, but I did my job elsewhere, to the best of my ability.

  “He raised his family, and I raised mine, children and grandchildren. The vendetta might have been buried forever—but for Don Paolo’s arrest and imprisonment. Three months ago he was convicted and incarcerated. I had no part in it, though he must believe otherwise. Or perhaps it has simply lain too long between us. Vendetta has a power of its own. Once begun, it must be satisfied.”