Chapter Eight Uninvited Guests

CHAPTER EIGHT UNINVITED GUESTS

‘Where’s your mom’s car? Did you take it to the Falcones with you?’

‘Maybe it’s in the auto shop or something,’ I brushed Millie’s questions off as we pulled up outside my house. The familiarity was not a welcome one. The empty driveway taunted me: Donata’s cronies had been here. ‘This is tough.’

‘I know,’ she said, leaning her head on my shoulder. ‘I’ll come in with you. We don’t have to stay long. Just get what you need.’

I steeled myself: a deep breath, a careful rearrangement of all the memories pressing against my heart. I glanced at my phone. Six more missed calls. Three texts from Luca. Two from Nic. One from Elena. ( Girl, get your skinny ass back here now unless you want me to see you into the next life. Classy.) Luca’s texts had gone from angry to worried, and I was starting to feel bad. I had thought he would just infer from my absence that I needed some space.

I composed a reply to Luca, ignoring Elena’s entirely.

I’ll be back later. I’m scattering my mother’s ashes today. Please don’t call me again.

It even hurt to type it. I tried to rub the pain from my chest, but it was no use. I was just going to have to breathe through it.

I unlocked the front door and we stood there side by side on the threshold, staring at the setting of my old life.

Welcome home, Sophie. Please enjoy this momentary stab in the heart.

The house was undisturbed, save for some drops of dried blood on the hall floor. Jack had obviously tracked back through here after I stabbed him in the eye.

How strange that the sight of blood no longer bothered me.

How strange that another’s pain would cause me such peace of mind.

How strange that I would wish my uncle, one of the closest people to me in the world, dead, and soon.

And that I would be the one to kill him.

‘Let’s be quick and careful about this,’ I warned Millie. ‘Stay by the door and keep it open, just in case there are any Marinos floating around here. If you hear or see anything, don’t hesitate to scream.’

‘You’re joking, right?’ Millie snorted. ‘I think you’ve been spending too much time with Felice Falcone, Soph.’

‘Well, you’re not wrong about that.’ I wished I was joking about the warning, but I knew I had to be on my guard. If the Marino family could smuggle my mother’s car out of Cedar Hill unnoticed, they could certainly get into my house, and I wasn’t dumb enough to stay even a minute longer than was necessary.

‘Although,’ added Millie, her tone turning sceptical as her attention fell on the bloodied floorboards. ‘That does look suspiciously like blood. Or maybe someone was just eating a scone really messily, and the jam got everywhere…’

‘Yeah, sure. Maybe Jack decided to make himself a random British teatime snack… you know, right after I stabbed him in the eye with a switchblade.’

Millie scrunched her eyes shut. ‘Oh, I really didn’t need that mental image again.’

I took the stairs two at a time. In my bedroom, I shoved the remainder of my clothes into a bag and grabbed a photo of my family – a Christmas shot from three years ago. We were dressed in matching Santa hats and hideously oversized reindeer sweaters, and smiling gleefully at the camera. My father looked at least twenty years younger, his face unlined by worry. My mother was as beautiful as ever, her hair framing her face in a golden halo as she pressed her cheek to mine. I looked at myself in the photo, and saw a stranger staring back. My hair was bright and glossy, my skin tanned. I was smiling so much my cheeks were probably hurting.

Jack had taken the photo. He had downed at least eight glasses of eggnog and kept swaying back and forth, and my father had been chastising him for it, my mother keeping her mouth shut. Swallowing her annoyance, because it was Christmas, and she couldn’t kick Jack out at Christmas. I wished she had. I wished she had kicked him to the other side of the world and left him there. At least he wasn’t in the photo. There was still the matter of my father and his lying eyes, but it was the best photo I had, and the only one I bothered to take with me. I left the rest – the books and trinkets, notepads, all those prison letters from my father – all those false words.

The scent of lavender was fading from my mother’s bedroom. It took every ounce of strength not to lie down in her bed, bury myself in the duvets and never get up. I packed some of her jewellery, a sapphire teardrop necklace and matching earrings – I’d be damned if Donata Marino ever got her spindly fingers on them. I took my mom’s favourite sweater, too, pressing my face into it before folding it up.

After calling down to Millie to make sure she was still there – which she was, and obviously texting Crispin too, because she was giggling like a haunted doll from a horror movie – I slipped into a black shift dress and matching ankle boots. I brushed my hair out, swept it away from my face and looked at myself in the mirror. I was giving off a pretty potent Wednesday Addams vibe, but at least I was demure. I was elegant. My mother would have approved.

I looked at my phone. There was a reply from Luca:

Where are you now? Are you by yourself?

I didn’t bother texting him back. If he wanted to get angry at me, he could save it for later. I wasn’t in the mood right now. At the bottom of the stairs, I filled Millie’s arms with all the things I was taking from the house, and tried to ignore all the things I was leaving behind. After this, there would be no looking back. Nothing left undone or unsaid. Today was about closure. Today was about moving on.

‘You look nice,’ she said. ‘I like that dress.’

I shrugged. ‘My mom always liked me in dresses, even though they make me look about five years old.’

‘Ah, Soph, don’t be dramatic. You look at least seven and a half in that.’

I stuck my tongue out at her as I slipped into the sitting room, and then found myself standing in front of the urn on the mantelpiece. Stalling.

I stared at it for a minute – this thing that now held the essence of my mother. The urn was dark purple, her favourite colour – I must have told them that. I couldn’t remember now. There was a thin gold band around the top, and a banner of floral filigree bordering it. It was beautiful, I supposed, but it made me a little sick inside.

When we got back into the car it was almost 1 p.m. Millie was adjusting her mirror, frowning. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Black SUV at the end of the street,’ she sighed. ‘Can’t tell which Falcone it is.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said, refusing to turn around. I was singularly focused. Today was about my mother. Today was about goodbye. ‘Let’s just go. I don’t want to be late.’

Beyond the last rows of boxy houses and the dilapidated football field, the town sloped upwards, turning the street narrow as it climbed until the land flattened out unexpectedly and gave rise to a generous spread of cedar trees. It was a peaceful wedge of nature, where everything was crisp and green and pretty, and if you weaved your way through the trees to where the hill sloped down again, you could see the river winding towards the town below.

It was my mother’s favourite place. We used to go on walks there together when I was younger. Back when I got bored easily and complained about being too cold or too tired to climb the hill. Back when I didn’t know how good I had it.

At the top of the hill, Millie parked along a dirt border beneath a cluster of trees. We got out, my hands clutched tight around the urn. The scent of pine wrapped around me, the light breeze pushing wisps of hair across my face. It smelt like the past.

Ursula, Gracewell’s Diner’s former assistant manager, bustled towards me, her usual bright clothes replaced by a long black dress and matching coat. She was wrapped up to her nose in a grey scarf, revealing only a hint of her inky black eyes and cropped white hair.

She embraced me awkwardly, the urn still held between us. She cupped my face in her hands, as if she was trying to peer into my soul. ‘How have you been? Where have you been?’ She took a step back, affording me a cursory once-over. ‘I’ve been worried about you. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.’

I brushed off her questions, like I had been rehearsing. I told her I was staying with friends outside the city, trying to come to terms with everything. She didn’t push it, but curiosity burnt in those dark eyes. ‘Thanks for coming,’ I offered, before she could burrow any deeper into my barefaced lie. I felt glad of her familiarity, even if it did come peppered with suspicion. ‘It means a lot to me.’

She squeezed my arm, her brows creasing. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Sophie.’

People who make time for the sadness in your life, not just the joy, are worth keeping around. It saddened me to think of my new life now, and how there was no place for Ursula in it.

Almost everyone I had invited was here: Mrs Bailey, who was wearing a netted black veil and a huge fur coat that seemed to say I’m the chief mourner here and I am also very rich. Millie’s parents had come, and her brother Alex too. He embraced me in an awkward hug, and I tried to remember the time when that would have been the best thing to ever happen to me.

There were some old acquaintances from the diner, too, and my mother’s stalwart clients from the city. A few of her closest friends had made it, the ones who had stuck around after my father went to prison.

I recognized most of the faces, and could guess at the ones that didn’t immediately register. That’s how small her circle had become after my father went to jail. That’s how easy it was to corral everyone she cared about into the same space. They parted in a sea of drawn faces, each one offering renewed sympathies as I passed through them. Millie linked arms with me, and I leant against her, finding comfort in the faces of those who had known my mother as I did – as someone who was happy and bright and beautiful. This was how she would be remembered. These were the people she loved most in the world.

I tried not to think about my dad. The last time I had spoken to him I had smashed our house phone against the wall. Michael Gracewell was a lie – Vince Marino Jr was the truth, and he never had the guts to tell me. Above all the other heinous things he had done – the murders and the lies – that was the cherry on top. I could never forgive him for that. For taking away my identity before I had a chance to learn it for myself.

‘What a lovely idea this is, Persephone.’ Mrs Bailey was in front of me. She removed the netted veil from her face and smoothed it back over her hair. Her eyes were rimmed in black. ‘To give your mother this beautiful send-off. It’s what she would have wanted after such a tragic… well…’ She trailed off, and I silently dared her to mention my uncle. The fugitive. They all suspected his involvement, but they had no idea.

‘Nice coat,’ I said, steering the conversation to a safer topic. ‘Where did you get it?’ A Titanic survivor?

‘Oh, this?’ She brushed her hands along the front of it. ‘It’s just something I had in the back of the closet.’

‘Well, it goes very nicely with the veil.’ Speaking of the veil, are you fucking serious right now?

‘I remember when you were younger…’ She looked past me, to the trees over my shoulder, as though they were whispering to her. ‘I would often see you and your mother here. It seems like a lifetime ago now.’

My mind sailed back through those memories. To ham sandwiches and smoothies underneath the trees, to watching the river meander into town, to blowing dandelion wishes over the hill and listening to the sound of my mother laughing. ‘This was a happy place for us. For her.’

‘I’m sure it always will be.’ She touched my arm, her long fingernails pressing grooves into my skin. ‘And, well, there’s something else.’ Mrs Bailey cleared her throat. ‘We, as a community – I mean, well, with the short notice, not everyone could make it, but we wanted to do something nice for your mother, to show how much we cared about her, and how wonderful she was. We had a few donations…’

Mrs Bailey shuffled backwards, and that’s when I saw it properly for the first time. A wooden bench had been set into a new granite slab on the edge of the grassy hill. A bench right where we used to sit when I was younger, where we would search underneath the trees and collect pine cones for Christmas wreaths. I edged forward, the short heels of my boots sticking and unsticking in the grass. I ran my fingers along the wood. I could still smell the varnish. A gold plaque had been set into the middle of the bench:

In loving memory of Celine Gracewell.

May she rest in peace.

‘Oh.’ My voice was just a squeak in my chest. ‘That’s lovely.’ In truth, it was the loveliest thing I could have imagined.

Someone had even tied a purple ribbon around each arm – an ode to my mother’s love of creativity. Here she would be, in nature, remembered for ever in one of her favourite places. Somewhere other mothers could sit with their daughters, and laugh while blowing dandelion wishes over the hill.

‘Thank you,’ I said, gazing across the small puddle of mourners, wondering just how much they had given from their Christmas funds or their savings to make this happen. ‘She would have loved it.’

I stood in front of everyone with the river at my back, and cleared my throat. I wasn’t sure how to go about this, and part of me regretted the absence of a formal officiate, but my mother had never really been a fan of organized religion. Or organized anything, in fact.

‘Thank you all for coming,’ I said, not sure where to rest my gaze. That’s the most awkward thing about public speaking – not staring at anyone in particular, but not looking at the ceiling either in case people think you’re an idiot. Focus . I fixed my eyes on Mrs Bailey’s veil. Too ridiculous . Ursula’s beady eyes. Too suspicious . Finally I found Millie’s reassuring smile in the small crowd. ‘This isn’t going to be a formal ceremony because my mom wasn’t really a formal person. She loved spontaneity and chaos, she loved nature and being outdoors, but most of all, she loved being around her family and friends – the people who lit up her life. I think it’s fair to say she lit up ours too.’

Murmurs of approval filtered through the group, nodding heads and knowing smiles. And then the huddle was moving, just a little, and someone was slipping between the shoulders of Mrs Bailey and Millie. He stopped between them, and they let him stay there, shoulder to shoulder, his head above theirs as he stood directly across from me. And suddenly I knew exactly where to rest my surprised gaze. Luca was standing right there in front of me.

He smiled at me – it was small and fleeting, but I understood. In that moment, we weren’t at odds with each other. He had come to honour the memory of my mother. He had come to stand in solidarity with me.

I opened the ceremony up to the others, and Ursula pottered forward to tell a story about my mother. Then Mrs Bailey chimed in with her own and, one by one, people spoke up, just to say something small – a word, a sentence or an anecdote, and they collected in the air around us – the essence of my mother and all the light she had brought to our lives.

And then Millie took a step forward, hands clasped innocently behind her back. ‘I’ve got one,’ she said, her smile sloping to one side. A little part of me wanted to take her by the shoulders and whisper, Know your audience . ‘When Soph and I were younger, there was this store at the very end of Main Street called The Gem that all the cool kids hung out at after school. Naturally it was the place to be.’

Luca arched a brow, intrigue cocking his head to one side.

‘There was this group of boys who hung out there in the evenings, and I had my eye on one of them. Can’t remember his name, but he used to spike his hair in this really cute boy-band-esque way, and he wore high-top shoes which were all the rage.’ Alex rolled his eyes at his sister. ‘Celine told us we couldn’t go on our own because we were too young and it was going to get dark soon. Well, we complained for what felt like hours until, eventually, seeing how much the trip really meant to us, and how important it was for our confidence as young, capable women, Celine finally gave in. It was raining really hard outside but we didn’t care. We zipped up our raincoats and set off.’

A ray of warmth tickled my chest. Everyone was enraptured by Millie – that lilting British accent, the elaborate hand gestures, the whirring confidence with which she spoke. Even Luca was listening intently.

‘It was winter and it was pretty dark, not to mention the streets were deserted because of the rain. After about five minutes, Soph noticed there was someone trailing behind us. A man in a long trench coat was following us! He’d come out of nowhere, and his hood was up so we couldn’t see his face. We upped our pace, and when we looked over our shoulders, the man had sped up too. So we ran, hand in hand, as fast as we could, splashing in and out of puddles until we finally got to the store. I honestly thought I was going to have a heart attack. After all that commotion, and the risking of our lives, the cute boys weren’t even there! The place was deserted.

‘Well, naturally I was livid. Soph actually thought it was funny, but she always has had a warped sense of humour. So in the end, we bought a couple of milkshakes, drank them way too quickly, and then ran all the way home, the Trench Coat Villain still hot on our heels!’

A laugh bubbled out of me as the memory crystallized, and for the first time, Luca shifted his attention from Millie to me.

‘When we got back, we slammed the front door behind us and tumbled into Soph’s kitchen. We were panting so hard, we couldn’t even speak, and then the door flew open and who should come in but the Trench Coat Stalker!’

Mrs Bailey actually gasped, grabbing Luca’s arm in her moment of shock, then releasing it in the same instant with an even bigger and much more dramatic gasp at having actually touched a Falcone. Luca didn’t seem to care.

‘And then the stalker lowered his hood, and who was it?’ Millie’s teeth flashed. ‘Celine!’ Laughter filtered through the crowd. ‘She wanted us to have our adventure but she didn’t want us to be in any danger, so she tried to follow us to the store in her own stealth-like way to make sure nothing happened to us.’

‘Only it didn’t work,’ I chimed in. ‘Because her raincoat was terrifying and the hood covered her whole face and made her look like something from a horror movie.’

‘It scared us half to death,’ said Millie, shaking her head, a half-smile still playing on her lips. ‘But it was so funny.’

I remembered how much we had all laughed after that. How hilarious my mother found it that she had been chasing to keep up with us without realizing we were running from her the whole time.

‘But that was Celine,’ said Millie. ‘Kind and protective, and fierce when she had to be. She would do anything for her family. And even though she’s gone now, she’s still here.’ Millie gestured around her, at the air and the trees and gentle sway of the leaves. ‘She’s here.’ She pressed her hand to her heart, and when she spoke again, her words were watery. ‘And most importantly, she’s there.’ She gestured towards me, trying to smile as we locked eyes. ‘She’s in you, Sophie. All the goodness in her is in you now, too. You made her so proud, and I know you always will. You are her heart. Her memory will live on in you.’

A ripple of agreement travelled through the huddle. I swallowed the thickness in my throat. Well, damn. If Millie wasn’t the queen of speeches, I didn’t know who was. She should write for the president. She should be the president. Or the prime minister. Whatever.

I did my best to stand straight and not crumple, because if I let myself ponder Millie’s last line – of my mother’s pride in me, of her place in my life and my future, I would rip my hair out. Today was about saying goodbye. Tomorrow was about revenge. Nothing had changed that. Nothing could change that now.

‘Thank you for all those wonderful tributes,’ I said, picking up the urn and brushing past the heart-crushing sincerity of my best friend’s speech before it demolished me. ‘I’m going to scatter her ashes and then I’m going to say goodbye.’ I turned from them, the urn heavy in my hand, and walked to the edges of the hill before it sloped downwards again. Silence fell across the clearing, the only sounds the distant rumbling of a car engine and the rustling of leaves overhead. I peered at the river below, the wind sailing across my cheeks, as I unclasped the urn.

I love you. I’ll love you for ever.

The wind whipped the ashes into the air and pulled them downstream, to where the river flowed freely, and in that moment, I felt nothing but her, around me, within me, and it was a quiet, fleeting second of happiness that I knew I would not feel again for a very long time.

There was a scuffle behind me – a low rumbling intruding on the quiet reverence. I set the now-empty urn at my feet and turned around, ready to glare at whoever had the audacity to talk during such an important moment. I was all puffed up, irritated and heated, the words ready on my tongue… but in their place, only one slipped out.

‘Dad?’

I froze on the hill over the river, my jaw unhinged, as my father made his way through pockets of mourners. I scanned him, a part of me thinking he wasn’t real, that the grief had finally driven me mad.

It was really him.

Scruffy and thin, and dressed in one of his old suits, the sleeves gaping, the collar of his shirt unstarched. A tracking bracelet around his ankle, a prison guard twelve feet to his left, arms folded across his chest as he waited under a tree. And that word – one of the last he’d said to me before I’d smashed the phone – flashed inside my head. Furlough. I’ve applied for furlough.

Well, holy crap. They had let him out. Someone had obviously told him about my mother’s ceremony, and the prison had decided to let him come.

Those idiots.

I froze as my father dipped his head in reverence, low words exchanged with a couple of my mother’s friends, whose eyes were bugging just as crazily as mine. I froze as he smiled and embraced Ursula, as he shook hands with Mrs Bailey, as he stood there, accepting condolences as if they were prizes.

I stayed stock-still, gaping, right up until the moment Millie leapt from her place on the far side of the huddle and pushed herself in front of my father, so that he couldn’t come any closer, so that he couldn’t see what I could see from my vantage point. Then my brain fissured, and understanding hit me like a lightning bolt.

Oh, shit.

Michael Gracewell, aka Vince Marino Jr, heir to the Marino crime family, was unwittingly hovering ten feet away from Luca Falcone, the active underboss of the entire Falcone dynasty.

Horror roiled in my stomach, my head swivelling to where Luca was standing.

No. No. No. No.

Luca was staring right at my father.

His whole body was pressing forwards, leaning across that infinite space between them, and I swear in that moment I could feel the anger rolling off him. If looks could kill, my father – my ignorant, oblivious father – would have dropped dead on the spot.

Luca wasn’t moving. He was holding himself together, all his energy bound up in keeping still as he crushed his hands in and out of fists at his sides. His nostrils flared, shallow breaths swelling and falling in his chest. His lips were moving, but there was nothing coming out.

I had seen Luca angry, and I had seen Luca calm, but I had never seen him struggle so hard for composure. I had never seen him so scarily unhinged. He was trying to hold it all inside him, but all it would take was one thing, one tiny thing, to unleash it.

I stared so hard at him my eyes began to hurt.

Just look at me. Don’t look at him. Look at me.

But he was glaring, unblinking, at my father, assessing him with the deadly quiet of a lion stalking its prey. And why wouldn’t he be?

Here was the man who had killed his father. Luca knew the truth – he had seen Evelina’s ruby ring. He knew my father’s protested innocence had been a farce. Here was the murderer, standing unprotected not ten feet away from him, with a single uninterested prison warden sulking underneath a faraway tree. He wouldn’t be quick enough to stop anything, not if Luca pulled a gun.

Not if Luca lunged for my father. It could all be over in a heartbeat. His revenge was there for the taking.

Please don’t , I implored. Please don’t do anything.

Millie was embracing my father, inching him back into the circle, away from Luca’s glare.

Do something, Sophie. Do anything.

Everyone was staring at my father – the great mystery of Michael Gracewell, who was once again walking like a free man among them. No one was looking at me any more. No one was thinking about my mother. The day had been turned on its head.

Say something. Say anything.

I had to make my father disappear. I had to pull their focus from him. I had to redirect Luca’s thoughts. I had to calm him down, somehow, without drawing attention to any of it.

The words came flying back to me, from the only poem I knew, and the only one that would work just then. Thank you, Mary Elizabeth Frye.

‘ Do not stand at my grave and weep ,’ I said, my voice croaky with fear. I cleared my throat as, one by one, heads turned back to me. ‘ I am not there. I do not sleep .’

Come on, Luca. Come on.

‘ I am a thousand winds that blow. ’ My father stopped whispering to Millie and looked up at me. ‘ I am the diamond glints on snow. ’

Stay with me. Don’t look across the circle. Don’t look at Luca.

‘ I am the sunlight on ripened grain. ’ Millie nodded at me as if to say Keep going . ‘ I am the gentle autumn rain. ’

Luca was pulling his gaze from my father, slowly, slowly, like the weight of it was a great, hulking thing. ‘ When you awaken in the morning’s hush ,’ I said, my voice cracking, ‘ I am the swift uplifting rush .’

Please don’t hurt him. ‘ Of quiet birds in circled flight. ’ Please don’t take this day from her. ‘ I am the soft stars that shine at night. ’

Luca was looking at me again. His features had clouded over. ‘ Do not stand at my grave and weep. ’ My eyes were swimming with unshed tears. ‘ I am not there, I do not sleep. ’ And then my dad was breaking rank, crossing the grassy mound, coming towards me with arms outstretched. ‘ Do not stand at my grave and cry. ’ Everyone was watching us. A father reuniting with his daughter, and I realized I couldn’t push him away, no matter how much I wanted to. ‘ I am not there. ’ I blinked and the tears streamed down my face. ‘ I did not die. ’

‘Oh, Sophie, sweetheart.’ My father flung his arms around me. He pulled me into his chest, and I collapsed into him, staining his shirt with my tears. I hated him with a passion so fierce it burnt inside me, but I needed that hug – that embrace – and all the lies that went with it, because beneath all the anger, beneath every shred of betrayal, I still loved him. I still wanted him to be OK. I needed that hug because it was keeping him from Luca. It was keeping my dad safe.

We stood like that for a long time, my back to the others, my body a shield between the murderer who had lied to me my whole life, and the assassin who had been watching over me in his absence.

When my father pulled back from me, and the cold air rushed into the space between us, drying icy tears on our cheeks, everyone else was crying too, and Luca Falcone was gone.

That was the greatest gift he could have given me. The willingness to walk away. And I knew, had I been faced with the same dilemma, I would have failed.