Unwrapping the Innocent's Secret

by Caitlin Crews

  The abbey was nothing if not an excellent place for quiet contemplation of the impossible, like the existence of his son. Pascal stared at the ceiling and found himself wondering when he had last been somewhere that was this quiet. There were no sounds of traffic. There was no television blaring out the news. He knew there was a bell that rang out the sisters’ prayers, but it wasn’t ringing. And some days there were the sounds of the women who lived here, but today, the Mother Superior had told him pointedly, was a day of silence.

  Pascal could hear his own heartbeat. His breath.

  He had only his mobile phone, the laptop he’d left in the car and his own thoughts—which, he had to admit, was a far sight more than the last time he’d lain like this in this same bed, when he’d had only a collection of broken bones and vague assurances that he might make a full recovery. Maybe.

  And this time, when he looked out the window at the cold fields that stretched toward the towering mountains, he knew that somewhere out there was a child. His child.

  Pascal was trying to picture his son’s face when he fell asleep, his body giving up after his night of driving and all the discoveries he’d made once he’d gotten here.

  He woke some hours later to the insistent sound of his mobile, and scrubbed a hand over his face as he sat up, took the call and assured his secretary that he had not taken leave of his senses but was not planning to return to the office anytime soon.

  His dreams had been strange and tinged with memories of that long-ago accident, which Pascal assumed was par for the course—but still irritated him.

  “I will be staying up north,” he managed to growl out.

  “I beg your pardon?” Guglielmo replied, in mock horror. Or perhaps, the horror was not so mock from a deeply committed urbanite like his secretary, who had once claimed that visiting the ruins of the Roman Forum was as pastoral as he got. “You plan to stay? In that valley you claimed was lost in the mists of time? I’m sure I could not have heard you right. You don’t mean you have returned to that abbey, do you? You hate that place!”

  “Cancel my appointments,” Pascal ordered him darkly. “I have things to take care of here that do not require your commentary, Guglielmo.”

  “This is all very mysterious, sir,” his secretary replied, sounding as unfazed as ever, which was why Pascal tolerated his overfamiliarity and occasional small rebellions. “But how long do you intend to rusticate?”

  “As long as it takes,” Pascal told him.

  It was far easier to sound certain that first day. Because he’d driven so far, then woken up in his same old bed—but he was still him. He hadn’t woken up to discover that the last six years were all a complicated dream and he was still bedridden, weak and a nonentity with nothing to his name but a pretty novitiate who smiled too long when he looked at her.

  And it wasn’t until he’d ascertained that he had not been tossed back in time to that living nightmare that Pascal accepted how deeply he must have feared it.

  That didn’t sit well, so he concentrated on the present. He was here again, yes, but it wouldn’t be for long. He was more than sure. Because how long could it reasonably take?

  But one day passed. Then another. Pascal entertained himself with long walks around the village in the mercurial December weather, which he hadn’t been able to do the last time he was here. He told himself he was content to inhale the sharp mountain air and feel winter coming in, swept down from those towering heights. He was taking his first holiday since he’d left this village on a Verona-bound bus six years ago, bound and determined to make something of himself with the second chance he’d been given.

  Cecilia could take her time. He was fine.

  The third day was stormy and cold. Rain pounded down in sheets outside, and being cooped up in a room that had once been his cell did not exactly improve Pascal’s mood.

  It became harder to convince himself that he was anything remotely resembling fine.

  It wasn’t until the fourth day—when he was storming along the same looping circle through the fields no matter the suggestion of snow in the air—that the door to a cottage set back on the road between the abbey and the village opened, and Cecilia emerged.

  “Is this what you are reduced to, Pascal?” she demanded when she’d shut the door behind her and walked out toward the road. Scowling. “Are you stalking me?”

  “Perhaps you have forgotten that I was incapable of taking these walks when I was last here,” he told her. Perhaps too darkly. “The valley seemed larger when I could only look at it from flat on my back.”

  “I’m so glad we have your vote of confidence. Perhaps we can use your enthusiasm to scare up more tourism.”

  He eyed her, dressed similarly to how she’d been in the church. Except, he could tell instantly, those had been her work clothes. Cecilia was at home today, not prepared to clean an ancient building. She wore a dark sweater that looked sturdy and warm on her slender form. Her hair fell to her shoulders and he had the sudden, unwelcome memory of running his fingers through it as she’d lain beneath him. But what struck him most was the way the moody December sky seemed to reflect in her violet eyes, making her seem as unpredictable. Even though she’d come outside without a coat, and stood there, shivering.

  But when he looked behind her to the cottage, with smoke coming out of the chimney and windows lit against the brooding afternoon, she stiffened.

  “I’m not going to invite you inside,” she snapped at him. “You don’t get to meet him on your schedule. I thought I made that clear.”

  “And this is what you want for him?” Pascal waved a hand at the fields, the clouds. “A pretty view? A limitless sky, but no real options? What can he do here besides farm the land or work as staff in the abbey?”

  “As he’s five, we have yet to engage in any hard-hitting conversations about his employment prospects.” Her voice was cool. And insulting. “He’s more into trucks.”

  He considered her, and his near-overwhelming urge to get his hands on her. And not because he was angry. That was only a small part of it.

  “Thank you,” he said in a low voice. “That is the first bit of information about my son that you have bothered to give me. Trucks.”

  She had the grace to flinch at that. And then look away. “People live perfectly happy lives here, as hard as that appears to be for you to understand.”

  “Maybe so. But why would you deny him the world on the off chance that he will be one of those people?”

  “I understand that the simple life doesn’t appeal to you,” she threw at him, the cold wind tossing her hair about her. She shoved it back and held it off her forehead as she glared at him. “But that speaks more to your snobbery than any lack in it.”

  Pascal studied her, as she stood there, hair in a mess and clearly cold, with her body between him and her cottage.

  As if she could fend him off if he wanted to walk in that door and handle this his way. Right now.

  The urge to do exactly that was like a physical pain inside him.

  He had dreamed of his little boy’s face. He had imagined it.

  He supposed this was longing, this rough-edged ache that pulsed in him and left him feeling empty.

  Behind her the cottage looked warm and cozy. He could see the buttery light from within, and even though it was winter, he could see the remains of summer flowers and the planting that must take place in spring. As if this was a house well loved. It looked happy.

  Pascal couldn’t bear to think about how easily he could have gone home after his date in Rome, slept, then resumed his life. He might never have come here again. He might never have known.

  And he didn’t know what to call the thing that moved in him then, all teeth and claws and what-ifs.

  Cecilia stood there before him, her cheeks flushed from the chill and her arms folded across her chest as if to ward off the plummet
ing temperatures. As if he was the enemy when she was the one who had done this. She was the one who had hidden away here with this secret she’d had no intention of sharing with him.

  “I told you I was staying here,” he growled at her. “Did you think I would change my mind?”

  “Maybe I hoped you would,” she replied.

  With a bitter flash of honesty that he could have done without.

  It was not until he had taken his leave of her—to stomp his spleen into the frozen fields as he tramped around the valley—that he understood why he couldn’t quite bring himself to view her as evil. The way he thought he should. On the contrary, something about the way she’d stood up to him—bodily—made his chest ache, and it wasn’t until he was back in his stark, monastic chamber that he understood why.

  He would have given anything, or everything if asked, to see his mother stand up for him. Even once.

  But Marissa Del Guardia had stood for nothing. Not for herself, and certainly not for the child she’d never wanted who had ruined her happiness—something she had no qualm telling him directly. His father had swept in and swept her off her feet as if she was a flower to pick from a garden instead of a waitress in a restaurant he frequented. He’d used her as he liked, then discarded her when she’d fallen pregnant. He had never looked back.

  And Marissa’s response had been desolation, followed by sleeping pills, and whatever she could find to take the edge off during the day.

  Pascal couldn’t imagine any circumstance in which she would ever have stirred herself to defend him. He was only surprised she’d actually carried him to term.

  He couldn’t deny that there was a part of him that liked the fact that his child’s mother was prepared to fight off any adversary. Even if that adversary was him.

  But by the time a week had dragged by with him marooned in an empty room with only his memories for company and work to dull that noise, Pascal was beginning to lose his famous cool.

  It had been educational, to say the least, to discover how much of his business he could handle from afar. It suggested that it wouldn’t do him any harm to relax his grip as he had not done since he started. He would need to consider what that meant.

  But there was only so much “rusticating” a man could take in the presence of nuns who treated him like an naughty boy, the long shadow of what he’d done here and how he’d left, and the woman who appeared to think she could wait him out and, in effect, steal his child from him all over again.

  Pascal wasn’t here to address his workaholic tendencies. He was here for his son.

  And he’d been ignored as long as he was prepared to take.

  So it was almost lowering, really, when he stormed from his room out into the clinic’s lobby to find Cecilia waiting for him.

  She stood wrapped in a long, camel-colored coat that made her hair gleam and her violet eyes seem fairly purple. She stared at him for a long, solemn moment as if working up to what she meant to say.

  “I’ve been here a week,” Pascal pointed out, caring not at all if every person in the clinic beyond was watching and could hear him. “I have sat in my cell and performed my penance. What more can you possibly want from me?”

  “That’s a dangerous question.”

  “Shall I beg?” he asked, his voice soft with the menace building in him. They were alone in the foyer for the moment, though he wouldn’t have cared if the entire order was lined up around them, singing hymns of praise. “Plead? Or perhaps I should argue my case with a kiss, which seems to be the only time you forget to view me as your enemy? Tell me, which will work? I want to see my son.”

  He could see her pulse in the hollow of her elegant neck, but it didn’t appease him. He didn’t care if she was in the grip of the same emotions that buffeted him.

  “No such displays are necessary,” she said, and this time, he did not attribute the sudden flush in her cheeks to the cold air outside. “I will let you see him.”

  “You are too kind, Cecilia. Truly.”

  “That snide tone of voice won’t do you any favors,” she retorted, her eyes flashing. “I don’t have to let you see him at all. And don’t get your hopes up. I’m not introducing you to him. Not yet. But as you say, you’ve been here a week. I expected you to be gone before morning, again. Instead, you stayed and you didn’t try to force your way into my cottage.”

  “I didn’t realize I was expected to pass tests,” Pascal said icily. “Secret examinations to discover whether or not I’m a decent human being, it appears. I was unaware that was a subject for debate.”

  “The woman who cares for him while I clean has them running around outside this morning, as it’s clear,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. But he knew she’d heard him just fine. “You can see him. And before you complain that it isn’t enough, you should be aware that my first instinct was to give you nothing at all.”

  Pascal wasn’t sure he could trust himself to speak then, so he said nothing. He merely inclined his head toward the door, and watched as Cecilia wheeled around, then strode out. She looked stiff, her movements jerky—as if her very bones were protesting this.

  It only made the dark thing in him solidify.

  She kept treating him like he was that wounded soldier who could have died here, forgotten entirely. And he’d let her this whole week because that wounded soldier still lived in him. And because he’d forgotten that, and remembering it again felt like guilt.

  But he wasn’t the one who had concealed a child for years. Then refused to let her see him.

  He followed behind her, thrusting his hands deep into the pockets of his coat as she led him away from the abbey. He could feel her agitation kicking up all around her, so he stayed quiet. She was walking fast and almost ferociously as if she didn’t really want to do this. As if she was forcing herself. As if she was afraid that if she slowed down, she wouldn’t go through with it.

  Pascal didn’t really care how this happened, as long as it did.

  When they came to the edge of the field on the far side of Cecilia’s cottage, she stopped abruptly. There were three children out there, running in circles around a woman. They looked drunk, he thought. As heedless as puppies.

  “He’s there,” Cecilia said, and nodded toward the group. “The one in the middle.”

  And Pascal stood, stricken, as the two lighter-haired children seemed to fade there before him. Because all he could see was the dark-haired laughing boy between them. He didn’t notice his mother or the strange man watching them. He was too busy making circles and shouting out his joy and delight into the cold air.

  But Pascal would have recognized him even without Cecilia. Because it was like looking into his own past. It was one of the few photographs he’d ever seen of himself as a child, brought to bright and happy life right there before his eyes.

  It took his breath away.

  He felt empty and full, and mad with it. Something slammed into him so hard he expected the mountains had come down around them, but nothing moved except the painful kick of his heart against his ribs.

  My son.

  Dante was sturdy. He ran fast, and joyfully.

  He was like a bright light shining there on an otherwise barren field.

  He was like a punch, deep into Pascal’s gut.

  And for a moment Pascal just wanted...everything.

  He’d spent a week here, fighting the seduction of this place. This happy, ethereal valley. The peace of it. The ease.

  But he couldn’t fight the boy in front of him or the woman at his side.

  And in an instant it was as if he could suddenly imagine the life he’d left behind when he’d left this place. Her pretty face the first thing he saw in the morning, if he’d stayed. The child they would have raised together. The odd jobs he might have taken, to keep them afloat here. Nothing like the life he had now. He could see it in a long,
beautiful sweep of something like memory when it had never happened and couldn’t now, and it didn’t matter. He wanted it.

  God, how he wanted it.

  His woman and his little boy and happy, dizzy loops on a cold field.

  All the riches in the world, all the power, the revenge on his own father—for a single, piercing moment all of that fell away.

  And Pascal had the unsettling notion that he’d sidestepped into a different version of himself, where that fantasy was real. Where he’d never left.

  Later he would come up with reasons and rationales. Right here, right now, all he wanted was as much of that everything as he could get, whatever it took.

  “Cecilia,” he said, turning to look down at her, aware that there must have been some great emotion on his face. He did nothing to hide it. “You must marry me.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “HE WANTS TO marry me,” Cecilia said.

  It shocked her how hard it was to get the words out of her mouth. Possibly because saying them out loud gave them weight. It made them real. Particularly here, in the kitchen of the abbey where she had eaten so many meals in her time. And now cleaned it as if it was still her own.

  Maybe some part of her thought it was.

  Mother Superior sat at the long, communal table fashioned of weathered wood where the sisters gathered, her hands cupped around a steaming-hot mug of tea. Cecilia remembered when her hands had been tough, but smoother. Now they were gnarled with the arthritis she never complained about, and something about looking at those familiar, aged hands with those dangerous words floating in the air between them made Cecilia’s chest ache.

  “Does this surprise you?” Mother Superior asked. Mildly enough.

  But then that serene, decidedly calm tone of voice of hers was one of her superpowers. It made grown men quail before her. It made novitiates tremble. It had made Cecilia cry, more than once.

  Today she scowled into the sink she was scrubbing down, and absolutely did not feel the slightest prickle of unwanted moisture behind her eyes.