Irina had laughed at that, a hard, cynical noise as discordant to Lisbeth as pot lids clashing.
“Grow up, Lisbeth, ”she said.
Hurt beyond words, Lisbeth had gone behind the lounge. She crouched behind it, sobbing, her hands over her face.
“I loved you, ” she whispered over and over. “I loved you, I loved you…”
The pain had built and built, the pressure of it threatening to crush her lungs, and her heart, and her head.
Slowly her hands had inched around the back of the chair and her fingertips had brushed Irina’s upper arms.
And then, without even realizing fully how, she had hold of the leather cord that hung around Irina’s throat with a medallion hanging from it, the necklace just like her own. They had bought them together at the horse show in Wellington.
And her hands tightened on the cord.
And the pain swelled.
And her vision went red.
And she thought, All I ever wanted was for you to love me.
She cried aloud now, a sound so full of torment and raw pain it didn’t sound human. She cried for all she had lost-her heart, her innocence. She cried for all she would never have-a future, a family, love.
And when the crying stopped, there was nothing left. She was empty, finished. It was time.
With no emotion at all, she undressed. She pulled from the pocket of the borrowed jacket a small, very sharp knife she had also sorrowed from Elena’s kitchen.
And with the tip of that knife, she opened a vein in her left wrist, and one in her right.
And she stepped down into the black water of the canal and poured her life into it drop by drop.
Chapter 70
Sometimes, our best just isn’t good enough-not for those around us, not for those who love us, not for ourselves.
Landry and I made it to the canal where I had found Irina in record time. But record time wasn’t good enough.
Landry hit the brakes, and I think we were both out of the car before it fully stopped.
I ran as fast as I could across the little land bridge to the far bank, where the glare of the headlights shone on the little bundle of borrowed clothes Lisbeth had neatly folded and left there to be found.
I called her name and turned around, as if she would materialize before my eyes.
Landry caught me before I could turn too far and see too much. And he pulled me hard against him and held me there as tight as he could, as I cried in the only way I could-with my soul.
Chapter 71
In a way, I felt as if I had died over the course of those few days that winter. Parts of me I thought had died long since were resurrected and purged all over again.
In Irina’s death, I saw the death of dreams that never should have been. The life she had wanted, the reasons she had wanted that life, would have never brought her happiness. Just as I would never have found happiness with Bennett.
In Bennett’s death, I saw the wheels of justice turn in their own time, not in mine. And the old hatred and bitterness I had harbored for him all those years simply ceased to be. I didn’t feel happy. I didn’t feel relieved. I didn’t feel vindicated or triumphant or anything else. What I felt was the absence of feeling, and I knew it would be a long time before I fully understood what that was all about.
In Lisbeth’s death, I saw too much, too close up, and it hurt so badly to look at it, I could only take it out of the most secret part of my heart and glance at it askance for just the briefest part of time before I had to put it back.
Lisbeth had been the child I never was, had worn on her sleeve the heart I’d learned to guard so carefully so very long ago. And perhaps because I had never been allowed to mourn the loss of that child in me, I felt her death the hardest of all. It left me feeling wounded in a place so deep inside, I had thought nothing and no one could ever reach it.
I didn’t like being wrong.
I phoned Lisbeth’s parents back in Michigan and spun them a story about their sweet daughter and a tragic accident. They had no need to know anything about how tragic Lisbeth’s life had been in the weeks leading up to her death. Some truths are too cruel to pass along. I kept Lisbeth’s for her.
The hoopla surrounding the shoot-out at Alexi Kulak’s salvage yard would take weeks to die down. It was something to be endured, like a mosquito bite.
I gave no interviews, made no comments. I turned down an offer for a movie-of-the-week. I took a day and had a boat with no holes in it delivered to Billy Quint.
When I returned, Barbaro was at the farm waiting for me.
“I have much to apologize for,” he said, holding my car door as I got out.
“Not to me,” I said. “You did the right thing in the end.”
“Too little, too late.”
I didn’t comment.
“How are you, Elena?” he asked. He didn’t look at the sling on my arm. That wasn’t what he meant.
I shrugged. “I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know,” I said. “The benefit of being jaded and cynical. It’s difficult to be either shocked or disappointed.”
“I’m sorry for that,” Barbaro said. “I’m sorry we could not have known each other in a different time, under different circumstances.”
“So far as I know, this is the only time we’ve got,” I said. “All we can do is play the hand we’re dealt.”
He nodded and sighed, and looked away. “I’m going back to Spain for a while,” he said.
“What about the season?”
“There’ll be another. I just wanted to say good-bye. And thank you.”
“For what?”
He smiled a sad, weary smile, and touched my cheek. Gently, I’m sure, though I couldn’t really feel it.
“For being who you are,” he said. “And for helping me to see who I had become.”
The sun was low in the western sky, flame orange and fuchsia on the low flat horizon, when Landry stopped by later that day.
I stood beside the dark four-plank fence that created a paddock for Sean’s pretty mare Coco Chanel. She grazed as delicately as if she were eating cucumber sandwiches at a garden party.
Landry came over and stood beside me. We both watched the horse for a moment.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’ve had better days,” I said. “I’ve had worse.”
“Your father gave a press conference today. Did you see it?”
“My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.”
“He’s trying to pin the whole thing on the Russian mob. According to him, Irina was part of an elaborate scheme to get Alexi Kulak hooked up with the Walker family.”
“That’s why he makes the big bucks. I guess the movie people should go to him.”
“I’m sorry for you he had to be a part of all this,” Landry said.
“I’m sorry any of us had to be a part of it,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry he has to be my father, period. But let’s not talk about him,” I suggested. “He’ll only ruin a lovely sunset.”
He nodded and slipped an arm around my shoulders. It felt good to have him touch me, to have him be there, to know that despite his many rough spots, he would be there for me when it counted. Of the lessons I had learned during that week, that was the one I decided was most important to me.
I thought of asking him what would happen to the remaining members of the Alibi Club, but I knew the answer. Nothing. Nothing would happen to Jim Brody or any of the rest of them.
Aside from some minor recreational drugs, they hadn’t done anything illegal. They would probably lay low for a month or two, or maybe for the season. But then it would be business as usual.
That’s just the way of the world. Would there be more Irinas, more Lisbeths? Absolutely. But they would go into that circle of their own free will, and they would pay the price they paid. I couldn’t be everyone’s savior-nor did I want to be. I had my own life to go on with.