by Lucy Atkins
‘Really – no.’ He looks away. ‘No.’
‘OK, then. Maybe Joe should be involved in choosing her middle name anyway.’
‘Good idea.’ He looks back at her and grins. ‘Lily Ronaldina. It has a certain …’
They both laugh again and she feels a powerful ball of well-being dilate from her heart, push through her veins, filling her with strength. Everything will be OK. She looks down at Lily. You are safe. I will keep you safe.
*
The icy River Charles flashes past as they speed along Storrow Drive. It is Christmas Eve and they have broken out of the cocoon of the Special Care Unit at last. For three days she has longed to get out – Christmas Day in the hospital would have been tough for Joe – but now the city feels vast and perilous, no place for a frail newborn.
She knows that they have to talk. A speeding car feels like the wrong place, but she can’t bring Lily home without first understanding how Greg is connected to Sarah Bannister, Carlo Novak and Alex – and why he has tried to conceal it from her.
She looks over her shoulder. Lily is dwarfed by the car seat, chin to chest, a little pink gnome. She looks closely to check that Lily’s chest is rising and falling evenly. The responsibility of bringing her home feels overwhelming, suddenly. In the context of the other Special Care babies, Lily seemed relatively big and healthy, but now, in the real world, she feels incredibly tiny and exposed.
In Special Care, she and Greg had made a list of all the things they needed for Lily, and then Greg and Joe went to the mall. They bought the car seat, a Moses basket, an electric breast pump, a white wooden cot and a baby sleeping bag covered in stars, packs of cotton sheets and muslins, Babygros and nappy- – diaper- – changing things.
‘Everything,’ Greg said when they came back, ‘is at home and waiting for you.’
Joe held up a monochrome mobile. ‘Right now she can only see black and white,’ he explained, looking serious. ‘Her brain needs to develop more before she can see colours.’
She realized, then, that they didn’t even have a Christmas tree. ‘We have to get one!’ It suddenly seemed vital.
Joe opened his mouth, then looked up at Greg.
‘A Christmas tree,’ Greg said, ‘is the last thing you should be worrying about.’
Joe nodded, bravely.
She opened her mouth to argue, but then the nurse came over.
‘Greg,’ she says now, ‘we’ve got to talk before we get home. I can’t go home with it all hanging over us like this.’
His elbows stiffen against the wheel. ‘OK …’
‘So – I need to know who Carlo Novak is.’
He indicates and pulls into the fast lane. ‘My cousin.’
‘Your cousin? You had a cousin? Then Nell was right.’ Greg’s chin jerks in and she realizes that it has not occurred to him, until now, that she will have talked to Nell about any of this.
‘How could you not tell me that you had a cousin?’ She tries to straighten this fact in her mind. ‘There’s a picture of him from the Philadelphia Inquirer and it looked so much like you, I thought it was you.’
He nods. ‘I know. Everyone used to say that.’
‘You couldn’t look that similar.’
‘Well, we did. Our parents were siblings – all four of them: the Gallo brothers married the Novak sisters. Carlo and I shared all four grandparents, so we did look a lot alike, particularly in photos. Even our mothers would sometimes struggle to tell us apart in an old photo. But there was a three-year age gap, and we were slightly different builds and there was a couple of inches height difference, not to mention some fairly major personality traits. But in a photo I guess none of that was obvious.’
She thinks about the picture. It is true that the camera will love certain lines and angles of a face, it will bring out likenesses that are much less obvious in the flesh. If Greg and Carlo had matching bone structures, then they really could look almost identical in a photograph, or even perhaps in a thirty-year-old memory. She feels the tendons in her neck release slightly.
‘This is why Alex Kingman mixed you up then?’
He glances at her and looks back at the road. He is driving too fast.
‘I went to see Alex,’ she says. ‘I found him online. He’s convinced that you are Carlo Novak and that you almost killed him when you were students.’
‘You saw Alex Kingman?’
‘He was giving a lecture at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I spoke to him afterwards.’
‘Jesus, Tess.’ He looks genuinely rattled. ‘When did you do this?’
‘The other night. I didn’t go to see the photography exhibition, I went there instead.’
‘You lied to me?’
‘I was going to tell you only you got back so late that night, and then I tried to tell you again the next night and you got back late again – remember – you wouldn’t talk to me? You said you couldn’t think straight.’
He opens his mouth to argue, but stops himself, perhaps realizing the irony of accusing her of evasion and lies.
‘How on earth did you find Alex Kingman?’
‘He’s a partner in a Boston landscape architecture firm; he’s easy to find.’
‘But he could have been anyone, Tess. You know nothing about him. I wish you’d told me first.’
‘Really? Well, I wish you’d told me about your cousin. And I wish you hadn’t lied about Alex. You went back out to find him while I was sleeping in the hotel room. He says you threatened him in an alley.’
‘Oh, come on! That’s bullshit. He was waiting in the lobby when I went for my run. He accosted me. He was very aggressive. I just told him to leave us alone.’
‘So why didn’t you tell me about it then?’
‘I didn’t want to make things anymore stressful – you’d had a bad enough day as it was and I just wanted us to have a nice time together.’
‘He told me this long story about a cave dive, years and years ago in Florida. He said he could never forget your face because you tried to drown him – thinking you were your cousin, presumably.’
Greg’s jaw stiffens and tiny beads of sweat glisten on his hairline. ‘Nobody tried to drown that man.’ He changes lanes again, cutting in front of someone, then accelerating up close to the bumper of a BMW.
‘He said Carlo took him to an underwater cave and then vanished. He’s only alive because two experienced divers found him and saved him.’
Greg gives a snort. ‘He said that, did he? Well, I guess he’s forgotten a few crucial details. One, Carlo was getting him out when the other two divers came down, and two, Carlo only took off after the air ambulance arrived. It was reckless and stupid to try cave diving, but he did not leave Alex to die. He got him out of the tunnel.’
‘Why did he disappear then?’
‘Because Alex is a rich kid, Tess, and it’s generally a bad idea for a poor kid to endanger a rich kid’s life.’
She thinks about this for a moment. It is certainly possible that Alex’s memory of that day might be selective.
‘OK, fine, but whatever Alex does or doesn’t remember about your cousin doesn’t change the fact that you lied when I asked you about him. You’ve hidden Carlo from me. And you’ve also lied about Sarah Bannister.’
He shakes his head. ‘I didn’t lie about Sarah. I told you I thought she was someone whose baby had died. I said I believed she had a grudge, and she was unstable. That’s all true.’
She opens her mouth to quibble about lies by omission, but then stops. They are both guilty of this, to varying degrees. The more they talk, the more slippery everything feels. Greg is driving way too fast now, skimming past the other cars.
‘Greg,’ she snaps, ‘you need to slow down.’ She thinks about Sarah Bannister walking through the rooms, calling for her. ‘Is it possible,’ she says, ‘that she’s been coming into our house for months? I know someone has; remember when I asked you about my earrings that were out? And the mail being moved in the kitchen.
And the hairclasp – Helena would never wear anything cheap and plastic, would she? And before the potluck, I rushed back to grab something and the front door was wide open and I had this feeling someone was there, there was this smell … I think it was Sarah.’
‘Well, she might know how to pick a lock, but I don’t know, Tess. What I do know is that she won’t be coming near us anymore.’
‘We should have called the police the first time you got her note.’
‘Maybe.’ He nods, but she knows he doesn’t mean it.
Her breasts are heavy and aching and despite the extra-strength Tylenol it is painful to sit on the hard leather car seat. Greg drives right up to the bumper of an SUV and has to jab his foot on the brakes, making her jerk forwards. She looks back at Lily, who is sleeping still.
‘Greg, you have to slow down.’ She pushes her hair off her face. ‘You’re being dangerous.’
‘Sorry.’ He eases his foot off the accelerator.
‘So Sarah thought you were Carlo.’
He takes a deep breath. ‘Yes. My best guess is Sarah saw the news about my appointment, and the prize, and it brought back the trauma of her baby’s death. She confused our faces. I have no idea what she was hoping to achieve, but I suspect she didn’t either. She’s not a well person.’
‘She could have done anything to me – or worse, to Joe. You left us wide open.’
‘I understand why you feel that, I really do, but I’d never do that. After that first note, I got in touch with an old friend in Philadelphia, a psychiatrist who works with Sarah’s psychiatrist. There’s patient confidentiality, obviously, but I was able to get emphatic assurance that Sarah is only a danger to herself.’
‘Emphatic assurance?’
‘I was trying to find her, Tess. I just didn’t want to involve you. You had enough on your plate.’
‘I’m not a bloody child!’
‘I know, I’m sorry.’ He shakes his head. ‘You’re absolutely right. I should have told you who Sarah was from the start, and about Carlo. I am so sorry. I was trying to protect you from unnecessary worry.’
‘I don’t need protecting. And the unnecessary worry, here, is that you could hide this sort of thing from me.’
‘It was a huge mistake to think I could deal with her without involving you.’
‘I think you didn’t tell me,’ she says, ‘because you didn’t want me to know about your cousin.’
He nods. ‘I know. You’re right. I didn’t want to think about him. I’d shut him away along with everything else and I didn’t want to open it all back up again.’
‘Did he kill his baby? Is that why you couldn’t face telling me about him?’
‘No, God – no, of course he didn’t. He did nothing wrong, except get involved with a delusional drug addict in the first place.’
‘But it’s just not normal to hide this sort of information, Greg. We’re married. I need to know about your family because, good or bad, they’re part of you. I’ve told you about my mother, haven’t I? I’ve told you everything.’
‘I know you have.’
‘Right, then tell me about him – tell me about Carlo.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Did you know each other growing up?’
‘Yes.’ Greg nods. ‘We were close. His father died when he was just a little kid, and Julianna,’ he swallows, as if the name might actually choke him, ‘slowly fell apart. So we were together a lot.’
‘Your parents took him in?’
‘Well, not exactly, but they looked out for him and cared for him when she couldn’t.’
‘Did it damage him? If he was illegally cave diving, he must have been a bit unhinged.’
‘You can’t come out of a childhood like that unscathed. He had a self-destructive streak.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘I don’t know. At high school he hung out with the wrong crowd and he made some mistakes. But he made it to college, he got himself out of there.’
She thinks of Alex’s account. ‘Which college?’
‘He started at the University of Pittsburgh, then transferred to UPenn in Philadelphia, after the Florida thing with Kingman.’
It all slots together – Alex’s story is at least rooted in truth.
‘And he met Sarah Bannister in Philadelphia?’
He nods. ‘You wouldn’t think it from the way she looks now but she was incredibly beautiful. She was also magnetic and charismatic, you know – the way very smart, unstable people often are. He was drawn to her for all sorts of unhealthy and probably Oedipal reasons. It was a huge mistake, obviously, but by the time he’d worked out the extent of her drug use she was pregnant with his child.’
She glances back at Lily, tucked into her blanket, her pink hat almost covering her eyes.
‘How did that baby actually die?’
‘Sarah went into premature labour, probably as a result of substance abuse during pregnancy.’ His jaw is tense, his hands clenched on the wheel. ‘She’d been trying to come off opiates and she called him saying she didn’t feel well, she had stomach pains. Stomach pains are common in opiate withdrawal, but he told her he’d meet her at the hospital just to be sure. She refused to go, so he went straight home. He realized she was in precipitous labour, called an ambulance, but,’ he swallows, ‘the baby died in his arms before the paramedics got there.’
His eyes are fixed on the road, but she feels as if he is no longer seeing it. Trees and buildings are flashing past.
‘Can you slow down, Greg? You’re driving way too fast.’
But it is as if something has been unleashed and he can’t stop, can’t even hear her – he is shaking his head.
‘He was innocent, but it was impossible for him to carry on at med school after that – who wants to be treated by a trainee doctor they recognize from an infanticide trial?’
‘So he dropped out?’
Greg’s skin has turned a disturbing shade of grey. ‘He felt like his life was over.’
He jerks the wheel just in time to miss the bumper of a silver car – a horn blares.
‘Greg, please, please – we have Lily in the car. Just pull over; we shouldn’t talk about this while you’re driving.’
‘No, no. You’re right. It’s OK,’ He eases his foot off the accelerator. ‘Sorry.’ He takes a big breath, indicates and pulls into the slower lane. ‘It’s OK. I’m OK.’
She looks round at Lily again. She is still sleeping peacefully, unaware of the fast-moving vehicles and the icy road, or her father’s agitation, his profound distress. She presses her fingertips against her forehead.
‘What I just don’t get is why you couldn’t tell me any of this? How could you possibly hide this from me? Did you think I’d judge you for Carlo’s behaviour? I mean – my God, Greg – me, of all people? I grew up with a mentally ill mother – she killed herself. I’m hardly going to judge you for your own messed-up family members.’
‘No, it wasn’t that.’ Greg shakes his head. ‘Of course it wasn’t. I just made the decision long ago that I needed to put it behind me. It’s what I had to do.’
She realizes that all this time they have been talking about Greg’s cousin in the past tense. ‘Did Carlo die?’
Greg nods.
‘How?’
He glances at her. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean you don’t know?’
‘He vanished soon after the trial.’
Red blotches have appeared on Greg’s neck, but she is not going to stop. ‘I know this is horrible for you but you can see why we have to talk about this, can’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, so he disappeared?’
Greg nods.
‘In theory he could still be alive then.’
‘No, he isn’t alive, Tess, I’m absolutely sure of that.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘If he was alive, he’d have contacted me.’
‘Where were you
when all this was happening?’
‘It was the summer before I started Harvard.’
She tries to line up what she knows. There is Greg, orphaned, staggering through an undergraduate degree in Pittsburg before making it to Harvard just as Carlo’s Philadelphia medical school career implodes.
She tries to think of a gentle way to say what she’s thinking, but there isn’t one. ‘Is it possible that he vanished because he couldn’t face you? I mean, you still had a brilliant future at Harvard and his career was over before it had started.’
Greg’s jaw tightens. ‘It’s not like that, it was never like that. He loved me – and there’s no way, believe me, that I made him feel bad about himself.’ His voice cracks. ‘We were the only ones left, Tess. We loved each other like brothers.’
‘So you looked for him?’
‘Of course I did.’
‘What do you think happened to him then?’
Greg takes another long breath in, as if he is bracing himself for the memories that this turn in the conversation will necessitate. ‘The night he vanished he took fifty dollars out of his bank, but he left everything else – his ID, his wallet, everything he owned. My guess is he got on a Greyhound and went somewhere anonymously, then killed himself.’
‘But then there’d be a body.’
‘Not necessarily. Maybe a John Doe somewhere. Listen, I know he’s dead, Tess. I can’t explain how, but I know it. It took me a few years to accept it, and then when I moved to London I decided that I couldn’t think about him anymore – about any of them.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She reaches out and rests her fingers on his arm. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve had to live with this. And I’m sorry you didn’t feel you could tell me.’
Then she remembers Carlo’s alcoholic mother. ‘What about your aunt Julianna? Is she still alive?’
‘She died a year after he vanished.’
‘What of?’
‘Alcoholism, a GI bleed. She wasn’t much older than I am now.’ He clenches his jaw again.
‘What’s a GI bleed?’
‘Oesophegal bleeding. Not nice.’
‘Did you know she was dying? Or was it a shock?’
‘I knew.’
‘So you got to say goodbye at least?’
