Chapter Forty-Four Caroline

I’m out on the terrace, staring into nothingness. Or not nothingness, exactly, because I’m vaguely aware of the pergola woven in greenery, the infinite Gulf of Salerno below, lapping against craggy cliffs, and the cascade of pastel-hued houses baked into the mountains, all punctured by staircases hewn from ancient stone that weave up from the sea.

Not that I’ve climbed them. Nor left Villa Angelina at all. None of us have. It’s been all I can do to force myself to eat. To convince Rory to, as well. And to get through all the police business… giving statements… reliving that horrific night…

So far the board of Hippoheal has held off on all-out grilling me, but they’re aware now of Max’s fraud—the vaccine causing harm. I’ve had to fend off investors, board members, and employees—all expressing cursory condolences for Max’s death and then fiendish in their desire to discuss, to try to predict how all this is going to crash down on their shoulders.

I’ve buried my phone in my bedside drawer. There will be recriminations, but for now I’m too heartbroken. Too angry—at myself. Coming down from the worst night of my life.

Still, Villa Angelina is certainly not an awful place to recover from the man you loved trying to murder you. To grieve his death. To participate in all the reconstructive exercises your mind has ordered up, rummaging through all the ways you should have done things differently.

Suddenly a sound filters toward my ears, and my chest roils with familiar fear. It takes a few moments for me to register what the sound is—the door off the terrace sliding open.

And what it’s not—Max opening a window to shove me out of a moving train.

Footsteps against stone. Then Rory lowers onto the plush taupe cushions beside me.

“How’d you sleep?” I reach over to stroke her hand. When she doesn’t react, I linger for a few beats, then retract my hand, aware at how my skin snaps back when it detaches from hers.

“Didn’t,” she finally says. “You?”

“Not much, either.”

“Maybe we can have a sleepover tonight.”

“Yeah? You hate sleepovers. Like in the same bed?”

She bites her lip. “Every time I close my eyes, I see him, C. Just his back. I see myself walking toward him with that ice bucket. It was so heavy.…”

“I know,” I whisper. I want to say more: Thank you for saving my life.

I’m so sorry.

I wish it had been me.

It sickens me, that last thought swishing in my head. Because as I probe it, I see I don’t actually mean it. It’s my natural instinct, I suppose, to minimize myself to make it easier for someone else. Like, for Max. I nearly subsumed myself entirely to conceal all his lies. And struggling for my life out that window, I realized I want to be alive. I want it desperately.

Rory sweeps her hand roughly through her hair. “I don’t know how I’m going to live with what I did, C,” she finally says.

“What you did was protect me. What you did was save me.”

“But I shouldn’t have hit him so hard. And maybe if I’d have… called out louder. Tried to convince him—”

“No. He could have turned on you, too. The knife—he had it in his pocket still. We don’t know what more Max was capable of.”

“We don’t know.” Rory stares out at the terra-cotta planters brimming with rosemary. “That’s the thing. We don’t know. We don’t know if he would have seen sense. If I could have convinced him…”

“We never know, cara mia,” says another voice from afar, amid another bout of glass door scraping open. “That’s the strange and cruel thing of life. We never know how it would have gone if we’d done one tiny thing differently.”

I swivel to see Ginevra in ratty purple sweats, her purple-red hair a wild mop. I don’t know what I expected of the famous author mourning—maybe head to toe in black, with a black lace veil shrouding her face, and even black Jackie O sunglasses. Nope. She looks terrifically shabby and utterly sad. She sinks down into a chair on the other side of Rory, stares listlessly at a lemon tree. She dabs at her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Yes, it’s what I deserve, I suppose. To never know. What a purgatory. I’ll blame myself for the rest of my life. I don’t think I’ll ever be able not to.” Rory says it almost violently, like she’s trying to convince Ginevra of this, to make it easier on Ginevra somehow.

I hold my breath, because I’m not sure which way this will go, how the author will react. We haven’t much seen Ginevra in the past couple of days, what with the police having endless questions, and the villa being cavernous, each of us retreating into our rooms, our own shock and grief. But Max was Ginevra’s biological son. It’s still an enormity to process. And we haven’t yet gotten the whole story, all the hows and whys.

Still, I’ve gleaned from our limited interactions that the author cares about Rory, but nonetheless, strictly speaking, Rory is the one who killed her son with a crystal ice bucket. Defending me.

So I’m not so sure that the author doesn’t blame Rory—and me. That she’s not here wishing it were one or both of us who died in his stead.

Which is why I’m surprised—shocked, really—when Ginevra says, “You are not to blame, Rory. You are not to blame one bit. Please promise me you won’t blame yourself. Stop it right now.”

For a few long moments, there is only the tweet of a few magpies. They chirp and dance on the magenta bougainvillea that climbs the pillars pinning down the terrace.

“I killed him,” Rory says. “I—”

“You’re wrong. You are very, very wrong,” Ginevra says, and for a terrible beat I am certain she is going to correct Rory by saying that I killed him. That I should have exposed his wrongdoing earlier, and by failing to do so, I catalyzed everything that followed.

She’d be fair to say so, I think, for the billionth time since that night.

But then Ginevra says, “I killed Max.” Her voice dribbles over his name, fades into air that suddenly hangs stiflingly thick. “I killed my son, and let that be the end of it. I arranged it all—this trip on the Orient Express for you four. I told you, Rory, that Caroline was embezzling from Max. I didn’t contemplate—it didn’t occur to me—that those payments could be something else entirely. I had good intentions, it can be said. Yes, I did.”

Her face crumples in. “But good intentions mean nothing. Non tutte le ciambelle riescono col buco. Not every doughnut turns out with a hole, you know?”

“No.” I have no clue what that means.

“Not everything turns out as planned. But I suppose even that is absolving myself of responsibility. It’s just—sometimes things go horribly awry. More than sometimes. In my case, often. That is what I have learned in a life that has been long and difficult. I wanted everything! I wanted this trip to be perfect. I wanted to make amends, to meet my son, to meet you, Rory. I’ve thought of you as my daughter your entire life. I know it sounds crazy, but I have.”

“I don’t understand,” Rory whispers.

“Yes.” Ginevra nods. “Well, you wouldn’t. I will tell you. There is another saying we have that keeps running through my mind. Chi troppo vuole nulla stringe. You don’t know what it means, do you?”

“Grasp all, lose all.” Ginevra’s voice crackles with emotion. “I wanted it all. And so I have lost it all. This has been the theme of my whole life. I don’t know why I thought it would be any different this time.”

“I still don’t understand,” Rory says.

“No. Well, I suppose it’s time that I tell you.” Ginevra gazes back toward the screen door. “Perhaps you’d like to find Nate, have him here for this? Perhaps Caroline can get him.”

“Does the story involve Nate?” I ask.

“No. I just thought Rory might want his support. For him to… do the things men do. You know, when they love a girl.”

I find the statement odd, the sentiment, too. It’s like Ginevra is talking in theory about men, without having ever experienced one. Although maybe, on reflection, she hasn’t. I did a little poking around about Ginevra Ex when we did our interviews. She’s never been linked to anyone. No partner, no romance, as far as I could discern.

“No,” Rory says. “No. We don’t need to get Nate. I have Caro here.” Her eyes flitter over at me, and I nod, feel my chin tremble.

Maybe Rory doesn’t hate me. Maybe—just maybe—there is a chance she can forgive me, for that horrible night with Nate. For how badly I fucked everything up when I found out about Max’s fraudulent vaccine—for keeping the information to myself this whole year. For how fighting for my life ultimately cost Max his.

Ginevra nods. “Okay, so you are ready, then, Rory? The story I want to tell you goes pretty far back. To Moscow, 1987.”

“You knew my father in Moscow?” Rory’s eyes widen, mirroring my own surprise.

“Sì. I met Anatoly—Ansel now—in Moscow. And my sister met him, too. My twin sister. Orsola.”

“She lives here, doesn’t she?” Rory asks. “In Positano. That was our lunch date? I mean, the person we were supposed to meet at Le Sirenuse?”

“Yes. So you figured it… yes. We were all going to meet at Le Sirenuse. I was going to tell you and Max everything. That was my plan. Best-laid plans, eh?” Ginevra grimaces. “You’ve puzzled it all out, then, Rory, have you?”

“Not really. That’s all I really know. And Orsola, does she know what happened, then?”

“No.” Ginevra shuts her eyes, clamps down on her lip with her teeth. “She doesn’t know yet.…”

“About Max?” I don’t know why I’m surprised—I know nothing about this Orsola—but it’s been all over the press. “Doesn’t she watch the news?”

Ginevra flutters her eyes open. “My sister? No. No, that’s not necessarily… no, Orsola doesn’t much care for the news. I just told her there was a delay with the train. She won’t have heard yet. And I’ll have to tell her. But I needed to be alone with it first. I still can’t… It’s difficult to…”

No one speaks for a while. Then Rory asks, “Will Orsola be sad? I mean, about Max…”

“Yes. She will be devastated. You see, Max was as much her child as he was mine.”

The statement snags on my brain, doesn’t amount to much sense. After all, why have twin sisters across the world been so invested in Max’s life—and in Rory’s?

“I don’t understand,” Rory says, echoing my thoughts.

“Yes. I will tell you everything now, and then you can judge it all for yourself.”

“I don’t want to judge you,” Rory whispers. “I just want the truth.”

“Well, the truth you shall have. And trust me, Rory. You will judge me. As well you should. I deserve all the judgment in the world. And an eternity more.”