The House in Amalfi (34 page)

“The rain slashed down so we could hardly see, but I knew those steps like the back of my own hand, knew where they were too worn, where to jump. Lightning flashed and I saw Isabella take a tumble and Jon-Boy run to her. Somehow she struggled to her feet before he reached her. She ran onto the jetty.

“He caught up to her, reached out for her, pulled her into his
arms. As he did so, she went limp. Dear God, I thought, panicked, she’s dead. I heard Mifune and Nico on the steps behind me . . . heard also the sudden rattle of rocks and stones as the cliff began to slide, sending mud and rocks onto the jetty.

“Jon-Boy laid Isabella down. He bent over her, talking to her. I was running down the last few steps now. . . . Suddenly she sprang to life, fighting him off. He got to his feet, slipped in the mud, lost his footing again, crashed down next to her. He lay still. I was running toward them now, almost there. . . . Isabella knelt over him. I saw her put her face over his and kiss him. I saw her lift a large rock over his head. And then she let it drop. Even over the roar of the wind I heard his skull crack. Then she slammed his head down on the jetty. Again. And again.

“I pushed her away, lifted Jon-Boy in my arms. But he was already dead.

“I looked at Isabella. She just stood there, panting like a small scared animal, her hands over the child in her belly.

“I looked back for Mifune, but Nico had slipped and fallen and he was helping him up. I ran back to the steps to make sure he was all right, yelling for Mifune to come help me. When I turned around, somehow Isabella had rolled Jon-Boy’s body into the small boat. She’d cast off the lines and got in next to him. The boat spun round and round in the turbulence, and even as I watched, it was picked up by the giant swells and carried swiftly out to sea.”

“Into the dark, dark night,” Lamour said, her voice thick with tears.

“That’s the way it happened,” Lorenzo said gently. “I’m sorry, Lamour; I never wanted to tell you this. But now you know the truth.”

He wanted to help her but knew he could not. At this moment, she was alone with her pain. “There was nothing I could do,” he said quietly, “except wait for the storm to abate and the sea to send them back to us.”

He fetched her a glass of water, waiting until her sobs had lessened before he continued his story.

“Early the next morning the coast guard spotted the yellow tender a couple of miles offshore. There was only one person in it. Isabella. And she was half-dead. As was the baby she had given birth to, alone at sea in the storm.”

Lamour gasped. He put his arms around her and held her to him. “Isabella died, Lamour. But her daughter lived.”

He felt her stiffen.
“Jon-Boy’s daughter,”
she said.

Lorenzo took her face in his hands, thinking he had never loved her more than he did at this moment, when, because of what he was about to say, he might lose her. “
My
daughter now, Lamour,” he said. “Aurora.”

Her stunned eyes met his.

“Marella and I were filled with pity for the baby. How
could things be worse for her? Her mother had murdered her father, and now she was an orphan. I looked at my wife holding that poor little scrap and I knew we had to keep her. It was the right thing to do. But Marella made one condition. That Aurora would never know the truth about her real parents. We agreed there was no reason an innocent child should suffer because of them. Three years later, when Marella knew she was dying, she made me repeat that vow.

“So you see,” he said finally, “when I heard you were coming and that you were determined to find out exactly what had happened to Jon-Boy, I had no choice but to try my best to dissuade you.” He smiled ruefully. “Of course it didn’t work, because you had already charmed your way into my heart. I should have known any daughter of Jon-Boy’s would have that capacity.”

“Like Aurora,” Lamour said.

“Like Aurora,” he agreed. “But now you know the truth, and why I’ve spoiled her, and why she’s wary and uncertain that she is loved and always will be. There’s a fear, a kind of deep despair, in Aurora that I can never get rid of, no matter how I reassure her. Of course when Marella died, it only got worse. Psychologists blame it on the circumstances of Aurora’s birth, exposed to the elements, alone with her dying mother. She was born in the cold and the rain with no one to hold her; there was no mother–daughter bonding. Aurora is damaged. She’s manic-depressive; some days she can hardly bear to breathe, to live. And I, of course, live in fear for her—for what she might do to herself. . . . Perhaps our love came too late for her.” He shrugged. “I will always hope not.”

He handed Lamour the glass of water. She took a sip, looking big eyed at him over the rim of the glass. “Poor, poor Aurora,” she said, really understanding her for the first time.
“And thank you for telling me. I know Marella would forgive you, under the circumstances.”

“I hope so. Of course, Aurora still knows nothing about Jon-Boy and Isabella. Now I’m wondering if we did the right thing. Perhaps, after all, it would have been better to tell her right from the beginning.”

“At least then she would have known she had a sister,” Lamour said, suddenly waking up to the fact.

A smile broke across Lorenzo’s face. “Did I ever tell you why I love you?” he asked, and then they were in each other’s arms, each finding comfort in the other.

Aurora had always known she was adopted, but she had never questioned Lorenzo about her birth parents. He believed it was because she didn’t want to know, but now he felt he owed it to her to tell her the truth, and her psychiatrist agreed. But remembering Aurora’s fragile psyche, Lorenzo wanted to avoid the tragic details. He needed to make this as easy and untraumatic as possible for her. He’d discussed this with Mifune, who of course knew the whole story and who had known Aurora since the day she was born.

“Tell her she was always loved,” was what Mifune had said. “For Aurora, love is everything.”

That afternoon Lorenzo went in search of his daughter. He combed the grounds for her, but in the end it was Affare who found her, up in the tree house where she and Nico had played as children.

Lorenzo tugged on the bell-rope they had rigged up to warn of interfering grown-ups. Affare barked and the bell jangled, and Aurora’s head popped over the side of the tiny balcony.

“Just like Juliet,” Lorenzo called, smiling.

“But with no Romeo,” she answered with that bleak note in her voice that, he knew only too well, signaled that she was having a bad day.

“Come sit with your papa for a while,” he said, settling on
a stone bench in the shade of the grove of umbrella pines whose lovely rounded shapes never failed to remind him of the fifteenth-century paintings by the Florentine artist Paolo Uccello.

Aurora came slowly down the ladder. Her face looked pale, her long hair was uncombed, and she was shoeless in cut-off denim shorts and a rumpled T-shirt. She looked as though she’d just stepped out of bed, and in fact she had, because she had spent the night in her old refuge, the tree house. Lorenzo wondered if she was taking her medication, but he knew if he asked it would provoke her. He’d have to get Nico to check on her.

Affare gave Aurora a few enthusiastic licks, finally bringing a smile to her face, for which Lorenzo was grateful. He hoped the sunny mood would last.

“
Carina,
I’ve often wondered why you never wanted to know about your birth parents,” he began. “You’ve expressed no curiosity, but now you are twenty-one years old.”

“I never asked because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, Papa,” she said.

“I understand.” He took her hand and held it between both his. “And I know you can never call anyone but Marella Mother, nor anyone but me Papa, because that is who we will always be. But in fact,
carina,
I knew your birth mother. Her name was Isabella. She was a lovely girl, not much older than you are now, simple, sweet, loving. But Isabella was not married. One day she and her lover had a fight over another woman and Isabella ran away. She was eight months pregnant with you when she set out to sea in the storm.”

“You mean that legendary storm, when Jon-Boy Harrington died?”

“Yes. In fact, Jon-Boy tried to save her. Sadly, he perished, too. When the coast guard found the boat you had just been
born and Isabella was still alive. Barely. There was nothing anyone could do to save her. She died a few minutes later. But when I saw Marella holding you, a tiny scrap of a girl with huge eyes and a mop of dark hair, I knew that out of this tragedy we had been blessed and that you were ours to love.” He gave Aurora’s hand a squeeze, looking anxiously at her.

“We called you Aurora, after the goddess of the dawn, because you came to us with the dawn. You were our destiny and we yours. Aurora, you are the daughter of my heart, just the way you would have been your birth father’s.”

Aurora’s sudden cry of anguish set Affare howling. The girl flung herself into Lorenzo’s arms trembling. He patted her back soothingly, the way he had when she was a child, afraid to go to sleep because of the nightmares where “bad things” always lay in wait for her.

“It’s not your fault,
carina,
” he whispered. “It was no one’s fault. Isabella was dying even as you were born. Her reckless act killed her—not you. Not her baby. Believe me, Aurora, it was not your fault.”

“Then whose was it?” Her head shot up and she stared wildly at him. “Who got her pregnant? Who was this lover? Who
is
my father?”

“He was a fine man. A good man, beloved by everyone who knew him. He would have been a good father to you.”

“How do you know?” she demanded.

“Because I know his other daughter,” Lorenzo said, knowing the die was finally cast but not knowing what kind of Pandora’s box he might be opening. Aurora was staring at him, openmouthed. “He was Jon-Boy Harrington,” he said.

Aurora frowned, bewildered. “You mean
il dottore
?” Like everyone else, she’d heard about the legendary writer. Then she added, shocked,
“Lamour’s father?”

Lorenzo nodded. “Lamour is your half sister.”

Aurora turned her head away, staring off into space. “I don’t like her,” she said at last.

“You don’t know her,” Lorenzo said, “but now you have a chance to find out.”

“You are in love with her,” she said accusingly.

Lorenzo understood she was jealous, and he told her that one day she would understand that love between a man and a woman was a different thing from that between a father and a daughter. “Ask Lamour,” he said, “because no girl ever loved her father more.”

To his surprise, Aurora did not cry. She sat up, straight backed and perfectly composed. It was as though the shock of knowing who she really was had come as a relief.

“Thank you, Papa, for telling me.” Getting up, she added, “I think I’ll go for a walk alone. I need some time to think.”

He got quickly to his feet and put his arms around her in a hug. “I understand,
carina,
” he said gently. “But I want you always to remember that you are my daughter, the daughter of my heart. Nothing will ever change that.”

Aurora was smiling as she walked away, and Lorenzo thought she seemed at peace with herself.