“What if she’s lying?” I ask again. For her sake—and for ours—this would be much easier if it were a lie. “Maybe . . . maybe she ran away all those years ago for whatever crazy reason she had at the time . . . and then came back with this story because she thinks it’d make us feel sorry for her and maybe we’d give her money or something? I saw the way she looked around our house . . .”
He sits in contemplative silence, though we both know it’s a stretch.
“It’s strange that she hasn’t gone to the police, you know?” I continue. “After everything she’s claiming, a person would think that’s the first place she’d run to.”
Luca exhales. “Regardless of what did or didn’t happen, I don’t think she’s in a good state of mind. We need to be careful. You need to be careful. There’s something off about her . . .”
“Is there a chance it isn’t Lydia?”
“It’s her,” he says without pause.
My heart plummets, overpowering any shred of hope I had left. I breathe him in, close my eyes, and hold myself in the fleeting present for a moment until our unborn son stirs inside me. I place Luca’s hand on my belly out of habit. Fullness floods my body—the manifestation of assurance, perhaps, or a reminder that as long as we’re together, everything’s going to be okay.
Miracles happen all the time. This baby is proof of that.
“Promise you’ll stay away from her.” Luca’s tone is stern, uncompromising, and he removes his hand from my stomach. “Whatever she’s been through, it’s changed her. If she comes around again—and I imagine she will—let me deal with her.”
This is the man I know—fiercely protective, unquestionably loyal.
I never should have doubted him . . . he just needed a moment to process everything.
“You don’t think she’d do something to us . . . do you?” My voice breaks as the reality of those words washes through me. She can do whatever she wants to me, but if she so much as thinks about laying a hand on my children—I’ll do whatever I have to do, and I’ll sleep like a baby afterward.
“I’m sure it bothers her to see that I’ve moved on . . . and that I’m happy.”
I thread my fingers through his and try to imagine this from Lydia’s perspective. Whether she’s in a rational state of mind or not, it has to be frustrating seeing how Luca has moved on and flourished after her disappearance. Life has been kinder to him than it’s ever been to her. That has to be difficult to accept.
“So what do we do now?” I ask.
“We do nothing.” He leans in to kiss my forehead. “This is my problem, not yours.”
With those words, he puts the conversation to bed, and I close my eyes, listening and waiting for him to fall asleep himself.
But he never does.
And for the eight hours that follow, we lie in bed—a married couple pretending to sleep, pretending our life isn’t falling apart or changing in ways we never could’ve anticipated. Feigning, in deafening silence, that everything is going to be perfectly fine come what may.
When the sun rises outside our picture window, I creep out of bed and tiptoe downstairs to make his coffee and slice some fruit for breakfast. Chopping bananas and strawberries, I make a list of silent promises to myself: to trust my husband, to stand by him no matter what, and to do whatever it takes to keep this family together—because I can’t shake the feeling that Lydia wants nothing more than to see us fall apart.
And to be honest, if our roles were reversed and I were her—I’d want the same.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LYDIA
“Your friend from last night,” Delphine says over coffee Sunday morning. “I forgot to ask his name?”
“Luca Coletto.”
Her lips tighten at one side. “Name sounds vaguely familiar . . . you’d think after three years of living here, I’d know more of the locals by now.”
“He owns a few restaurants in town.” I take another sip. “Coletto’s by the Sea is the big one.”
I was trekking along the Oregon coast last month when I stopped into a middle-of-nowhere café for a coffee and shelter from the rain. A couple of retirement-aged men came in behind me, and the hostess seated them in the booth to my right. For the hour that followed, I listened to them ramble on about their nagging wives who are “never in the mood these days,” their dream cars—a Shelby Cobra and a ’57 Chevy, respectively—and their latest business endeavors. Apparently they were partners, moderately successful venture capitalists with their ears to the ground.
I tuned them out for the most part . . . until they started talking about some guy by the name of Luca Coletto who owned a slew of restaurants in “some tourist town” called Bent Creek.
With pricked ears and hands wrapped casually around a ceramic mug, I feasted on their gossip since they were obviously speaking of my Luca Coletto.
And thank God I did.
Because then they began blathering about how he was some overnight millionaire restaurateur with a handful of concept restaurants, a mansion by the ocean, and a “smoking hot” wife. Avoiding eye contact, I listened for entertainment purposes, absorbing every last fact, figure, and tidbit of conjecture. But after a few minutes, I couldn’t take it any longer. Tossing a handful of change on the table, I grabbed my backpack and got the hell out of there.
While I was sleeping on dirt floors and enduring weekly rapes, my husband was living the dolce vita. All those times I’d wondered what his life was like without me, I’d never imagined him with a beautiful wife or the amount of success that has strangers gossiping dozens of miles away.
And after everything that had happened, I never expected him to stick around Bent Creek.
Three hours later, I was already in the next town over. A woman on a mission. I hiked—and at times, hitchhiked—over the course of several weeks. And when I arrived at the town I once shared with my former beloved, I asked anyone who’d give me the time of day where I could find the Coletto residence. I got lucky when I stumbled upon a jaded former employee working at a Chevron. He told me exactly where I could find Luca, no questions asked.
I sip my coffee at Delphine’s kitchen table, hiding a barely there simper behind my floral mug as I envision the next leg of my journey to settle the score with this pathetic excuse for a life.
My thoughts drift to Merritt. Less than two seconds around her, and I can tell she’s an anxious type. Shallow too. Or maybe it’s introversion with a generous side of dull personality. She’s not exactly charismatic. Hardly magnetic. I get the sense she looks more interesting than she is, buzzing around in her fancy car with her expensive hair and curated wardrobe. She’s a human accessory.
The pity practically radiated off her in atomic-sized waves last night.
I’m willing to bet she feels sorry for me. And she should. I hope her heartstrings are pulled so taut they’re on the verge of snapping.
I finish my coffee, wash and dry the mug, and tell Delphine I’m going for a walk.
Stepping into the fresh air, I know one thing for sure—today is the first day of the rest of my new life.