“Massi’s here? Or did they—”
I stop myself. I may be used to talking about people I love being murdered, but my mother may not be so hardened.
“He’s alive but…” She makes a barely perceptible nod. “We won’t be seeing him for a while.”
So something happened. Something violent.
“Mom? Is he all right?”
“He will be.” She puts her hand over mine. “I need to leave it at that. Please.”
Her head is bowed as if in prayer. I barely know this person who raised me, who read to me and sang me songs. I don’t know what they took away when they removed her womanhood.
“I’ll take your word for it about Massimo, but you have to tell me about Dario. Right now.”
She snaps out of it, straightening her spine, looking at me directly with sharpness and strength.
“I don’t know,” she says. “None of us do. Willa got word Dario was at the St. Maarten’s airport. He’d cross paths with the Colonia men there. The airport’s so small, there’s no way they didn’t see him, and he should have been here already. I thought he was in the cars you came in, but it was DiLustro. He went off to make sure I was alone and then…” A smile spreads across her face and she holds my hands again. “Then you came down that driveway.”
She’s absolutely beaming. I feel sick to my stomach.
“I can’t go back to them again,” I say, knowing I will if I have to.
“I’m sure he’s fine.”
Fine. The word is so flat and empty—and my mother is so dismissive—it could mean anything. Almost anything. It means he could be alive, if nothing else.
“I know what he did to you. I heard how you came to be married.” She shows me the scars on my left hand. “I need to ask you myself, without him or anyone around… if he comes here… do you want him to remain your husband? Don’t—” She holds up her hand when I try to answer. “Don’t say anything until I’m finished. Please.”
“Okay.” I remember this about her too, the gently stern voice a child cannot resist, even when she’s grown up.
“You need to think before you answer.”
“I will.”
Nothing will change my response, but I can still think about it.
“If you could live a free life without him. If you could be by yourself without a husband at all. If you could find happiness and fulfillment and safety without Dario Lucari… would you? Your heart’s desire can be yours and yours alone. Think first, Sarah. Take a deep breath and imagine you belong… you belong just because you do, and you don’t need him or any man.”
I have to pause before answering anyway, so I spend that time considering the question.
I envision myself on this beach without him in my life. I’m doing things that are mundane to outsiders. Driving to the store. Buying fruit. Walking in the garden. I make them more banal. Cooking. Eating breakfast. Dressing. Reading a book. Existing under the crystal blue sky.
But what about the bad times? The boring. Cleaning the bathroom. The painful. Being sick. Giving birth. I imagine going through all of it without him.
What about the desires of my heart? I’m painting a huge canvas. Going into a trance-like state and drawing whatever comes into my mind. I close my eyes and build the feeling of living this way.
“Yes.” The affirmation comes from a place so deep inside me, I don’t even think about saying it before I do. Opening my eyes, I meet my beautiful mother’s gaze. “It would be a good life.”
“You can have it.”
“I don’t want it. I want him. I know I’d be fine without him. I could even be happy. I have love in me. It fits inside me. But Mom, I was taught to love a man. I was raised to be good at only that one thing. He’s taught me how to be so much more, and the more capable I am… I know that being able to live without my husband is supposed to make me love him less, but that’s not what’s happening. Everything I learn, everything he teaches me… everything I’ve learned by myself because he’s convinced I’m capable, none of that pulls me away from him. The more free I am to live in the world, the more free I am to love him. If I can’t love him, I’m not really free.”
“What if they have him, Sarah? You’ll have to find happiness without him.”
“If they have him again, I’ll go back and get him—again. If they killed him—” I have to swallow back an insistent wave of sobs. “His life’s work will be mine. I will destroy them. Don’t doubt me, Mom.”
“I don’t.”
“If he’s dead…”
“Shh. Okay…”
“I’ll start with Massimo.” I look away, onto the beach and the forever-blue sky.
Two men walk on the sand toward the lobby windows. I know them both, and one holds the keys to my heart.
“Oh my God.” I’m up, running across the lobby to the window.
I look for a door, but I can’t take my eyes off him. He smiles at something Santino says, hair flicking in the ocean wind. They step onto the long patio and navigate easily around the bar. I pound on the glass.
“Dario!”
He looks in my direction, making as straight a line to me as he can around the white deck chairs.
“Over here!” I call.
He’s walking on two feet. Not limping. No blood. No injury. I don’t care how he came to be here in one piece. I don’t care who he had to get through.
At the glass, he cups his hands around his face to cut out the glare. I don’t have the same sun reflecting on my side, but I mirror him. We’re two sets of eyes on opposite sides of a tunnel. His lips move, but I can’t hear him.
“I can’t find a door!”
He may hear me, he may read my lips, or he may want the same thing I want.
He leans away, and with his fingertips sliding across the glass, he walks the length of the room. My fingertips follow his on the other side, connecting us through the barrier like two magnets through paper.
My fingers skip over a seam, then another. A panel of glass slides open. I’m hit with the warmth of the breeze, the sound of the waves, and the unfiltered sight of him alive, unchained, whole.
“Prima,” he says, reaching for me. He cups my face as if it’s the thing he values most in the world. “You came.”
“I’ll always come for you.”
I launch into his arms, out onto the patio where he spins me around under the sun and the infinite sky.
We are free.
Dario and I are free, and safe, and whole. The entire world is off our shoulders. The women. The Colonia. The cages and the culture. There’s only him and me—what we decide together under the clear blue sky.
We are free to love without limits.
I laugh because I can’t believe it, and then I kiss him because it’s true.
EPILOGUE
DARIO
Sarah’s in the head, cleaning vomit off herself. She’s never once gotten sick on this boat, but the same can’t be said for Nico Junior, who sprayed apple and carrot chunks all over her on the way out to the deep sea.