Chapter Forty-Three Ginevra

The car was ice cold, its speed excruciating slow as they navigated Viale Pasitea.

“Your villa will have everything you need. We were lucky to…” Gabriele stopped; the sentence toppled off a cliff.

Lucky. No. No luck in any of it.

Ginevra knew Gabriele had been about to say they were lucky to find the villa at such short notice. That it was high season. Positano was booked. Ginevra had prebooked rooms at Le Sirenuse for everyone, but Orsola was staying there.

No, Ginevra couldn’t face Orsola yet.…

Ginevra stifled a sob. Images filled her head—Max on the ground, desperately trying to wake him, shake him, rouse him back to life. The train grinding to a halt. Medics, police. A stretcher. A sheet over his body, then inched up over his face. Like he never was.

Like he’d never even existed at all.

Ginevra’s knee knocked against Rory’s as they sailed over a bump. She looked at the girl, really looked at her, managed to focus upon something outside her own grief. The girl was motionless, staring straight ahead.

“Ginevra?”

“Yes?”

“Are you my birth mother?”

Rory still stared straight ahead, out beyond the window onto the fancy shops lining the one-way street, the charming hotels with balconies brimming with flowerpots, the tables spilling out of the restaurants at which Ginevra had dined—each a pleasant memory, posing for photos with the chefs, photos that now bedecked walls.

Ginevra had imagined showing them proudly to Rory, to Max. Ginevra’s second home, this town. She’d been coming to Positano for decades, ever since Orsola moved from Rome.

“No,” Ginevra finally said. “I’m not your birth mother.”

Rory nodded. Caro rubbed Rory’s shoulder with her long, pale, aristocratic fingers. On Rory’s other side, Nate kissed the top of Rory’s head and gave a pained exhale.

“So then… your sister is my birth mother, isn’t she? Orsola?”

Ginevra gasped. “How do you know about Orsola?”

“I just… I just do.”

Ginevra swallowed hard. “No,” she finally managed. “Orsola isn’t your birth mother, either.”

“What… I don’t get it.… I don’t understand—”

“It’s Max,” Ginevra finally said, and the truth of it briefly stunted her of breath. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything you want to know, everything you deserve to know. When we can sit and talk properly. When we’ve had time to…” Process things, was what she’d been about to say. But how could something this horrific—this final—ever be processed?

Rory finally turned to Ginevra, gazed at her with startled green eyes. “Max?”

“Yes.” Ginevra instructed her neck to bob her head. “Yes. I am Max’s mother.”

Ginevra’s lungs gasped for air. “Max is—was—my son.”