Читать книгу Whispering Bones - Rita Vetere - Страница 6

Chapter 1

Toronto, Canada

Present Day

“Hi, Esmeralda. How’s my grandmother doing today?”

The woman behind the desk on the second floor of the nursing home looked up and smiled. “Hello, Anna. She’s just fine. Stubborn as ever, though.” She gave a wink.

Anna LaServa returned the smile. She liked Esmeralda and knew the woman took good care of her grandmother. “Doubt that’ll be changing anytime soon.”

Esmeralda’s good-natured laugh followed Anna as she continued down the hall. Her grandmother, although tiny in stature, had always displayed a will of iron, a quality she had managed to carry with her to the advanced age of one hundred and three, and one she apparently asserted daily over the nurses charged with her care. Not for the first time it occurred to Anna that her grandmother’s longevity was probably directly attributable to her sheer tenacity.

She walked along the tiled corridor and entered the last door on the left. Her grandmother sat in a wheelchair by the window of her private room, fast asleep. Anna spent a moment studying her in the beam of sunlight pouring in from the open window. The shriveled form in the wheelchair no longer bore any hint of resemblance to the energetic woman who had raised her. Her grandmother’s head, bowed low, rested on a frail chest that rose and fell with shallow breathing. Parchment-thin and wrinkled skin hung from hollow cheeks, giving her a cadaverous appearance. Her wispy, snow-white hair, thin enough that her scalp showed through in some places, had been combed back and tied in a small bun. Boney hands, mottled with age spots, rested in her lap.

She appeared a portrait of fragility, but when Anna patted the old woman’s scrawny, sweater-clad arm, the faded blue eyes that opened looked sharp as tacks, and immediately alert.

“Hello, Nonna.”

Her grandmother’s sagging lips broke into a toothless grin.

“Where are your teeth?” It always disconcerted Anna to see her without her dentures.

“They hurt my gums,” the old woman grumbled. “I only put them in when I have to eat. But since you’re here...” She wheeled herself slowly over to the table next to the bed, retrieved her dentures from a plastic container and inserted them.

“How are you?” Anna asked.

“I had a bowel movement this morning. So, good.”

Anna felt a stab of compassion for her grandmother, a prisoner to her wheelchair with only empty days to look forward to. “I brought you some fresh nightgowns—and apricots. I know how much you like them.”

“Grazie, Bella di Nonna, I do,” she said, using the term of endearment Anna remembered so well from her youth.

Anna hung the nightgowns in the closet nearby while her grandmother helped herself to an apricot, selecting a ripe one and breaking it in half to remove the stone before taking a bite.

“Today is not Sunday. Why are you visiting today?”

“I won’t be in town tomorrow, and I have some news I wanted to share with you.” Anna returned to sit beside her.

“You are getting married?” The old woman looked sharply at Anna.

Anna rolled her eyes in anticipation of the ritual conversation. “No.”

“You’re—what? Forty-seven? Forty-eight?” Her grandmother shook her head in disapproval.

Anna gave her standard response. “Old enough to take care of myself. I’m fine on my own, you know that. I make more than enough money, and I can do as I please. What’s wrong with that?”

“Niente. Nothing. As long as you’re happy.” The old woman gave her a look, clearly conveying this was not a satisfactory situation.

“Of course I’m happy.”

It was a lie, but one that Anna had grown accustomed to. Although she enjoyed a prestigious career and had carved out a secure life for herself, what little happiness she’d known had departed long ago, just after her fifteenth birthday—the day she’d been brutally raped by a stranger while riding her bike in the park. That traumatic event, and what happened afterward, had cut a deep swath across her soul, one that, despite the passage of more than three decades, had never really mended. Since that day, she’d been dogged by melancholy, a certainty that she was doomed to misery. The old wound remained, as much a part of her as her arms or legs.

She realized her grandmother was speaking to her and blinked her thoughts away.

“Next week is the anniversary of your mother’s death,” her grandmother said.

“Yes,” Anna responded, “I know. I’ll be going to the cemetery after I leave here.”

The old woman’s eyes clouded over, and Anna knew her grandmother was remembering the daughter she had lost forty-five years ago.

“You’re going today to the grave?” she asked Anna absently.

“Yes. I’m booked on a flight tomorrow. That’s why I stopped by to see you now. A job’s come up—a very important one,” she added. “I’ll bring some flowers for you, too, when I go to the cemetery, all right?”

The faraway look in her grandmother’s eyes vanished and she returned her attention to Anna. “What kind of job?”

“Well,” she said, relieved to change the subject, “it turns out I’ve been put in charge of a very big project. I’m to head up the design of a luxury hotel.”

“Big-shot architect, eh?” A spark of pride lit up her grandmother’s ancient eyes.

“Enough that I got written up in Architectural Digest last month,” Anna said. Aside from the startling news of her latest assignment, that article had been the feather in her cap.

“What is this, Archi—Cos’e?”

“A magazine. It’s kind of a big deal.”

“Good. Brava. Where is the hotel you’re making?”

“Italy. Venice, in fact.” She waited for her grandmother’s reaction. Nonna hailed from Venice, as had Anna’s mother, and she suspected the fact she’d be designing a hotel there would please her no end. Instead, she was met with stony silence.

Finally, her grandmother said, “What, they have no architects in Italy? They need you to go there?”

Her cutting remark took Anna by surprise. “I thought you’d be pleased, seeing as it’s your birthplace.”

“I have no good memories from there. Why would I be pleased?”

Anna said nothing, more than a little taken aback by her grandmother’s disagreeable reaction. True, Nonna seldom spoke of her life back in Venice, and had never expressed a desire to return to her homeland. But this project was an important one. She should have been happy for her.

Perhaps her grandmother sensed Anna’s resentment, because her voice softened a bit when she asked, “Where in Venice are you making the hotel?”

Anna decided not to take umbrage at the old woman’s remark. “An island, just off the coast of Venice. I’m flying out tomorrow to have a look at the site.”

A look of confusion, and something else, crossed her grandmother’s face at the words. “Which island?” she asked.

“It’s called Poveglia. Do you know it?”

Tears sprang into the old woman’s eyes.

“Nonna, what’s the matter? Why are you upset?” For the first time in memory, her grandmother looked truly old and defeated.

“Do not take this job, Anna. You must not go,” she said in a tremulous voice.

Maybe Nonna was less well than she let on, and concerned that Anna wouldn’t be around to visit.

“I’ll only be gone for ten days, no more. And I’ll be back to visit the minute I return.”

“No,” the old woman declared, her voice turning imperious. “I forbid you to go.”

Her grandmother’s choice of words caused Anna to become irritated again. “Forbid me? What’s this nonsense? It’s an opportunity of a lifetime. Of course I’m going.”

“Do not go,” she repeated. “There will be other jobs... Leave this one to someone else.”

Anna bit back her rising anger and remained patient, knowing her grandmother’s mental condition might finally be deteriorating.

“I’ve already committed to the job. I’m going. Now, I don’t want you to worry, I’ll be back to see you the minute I return. In ten days.”

Her grandmother attempted to stare her down with a granite look, a tactic she had employed many times in the past. She almost succeeded. Confused and disheartened by her grandmother’s remarks and the way she continued to glare at her, Anna rose. “I’d better go now, let you get some rest. I’ll see you as soon as I get back, all right?”

She kissed the old woman’s cheek and, before another argument could get underway, walked briskly out of the room. Once in the hallway, Anna peeked back in. Her grandmother sat with slumped shoulders, staring out the window, looking sad and lost. Anna almost went back, but decided not to. Once her grandmother fixated on an idea, there was no talking to her. She didn’t want to engage in the silly argument again. Instead, she sent the thought she’d not been able to say out loud. I love you. Stay well until I get home.

As she stepped out of the building into the muggy heat of the parking lot, Anna looked up at the second floor window of her grandmother’s room. She waved to the motionless form in the wheelchair, but received no acknowledgement in return. Upset by her grandmother’s obvious anger, she turned away and got into her car, the interior of which had already become explosively hot. After rolling down the windows, she rummaged through the dashboard compartment and located the cigarette she kept for emergencies, even though she had quit smoking last year. She looked for a moment at the cigarette then lit it, deciding she needed one before her next stop, her mother’s gravesite.

The glaring sun burned her bare thighs through the open window and the smoke only made her dizzy. She tossed the cigarette before pulling out of the parking lot without a backward glance.

* * * *

Anna crouched and placed two bundles of fresh flowers onto the grave. She ran her fingers across the engraved letters forming her mother’s name on the headstone. It was all she had—a name carved in stone. That, and a vague and terrifying flashback that always haunted her whenever she visited her mother’s grave—a memory of being lifted over a casket by her grandmother to kiss the cheek of her dead mother’s face.

She’d been just three years old when her mother died, but somehow that frightening memory had stuck with her. The disturbing image returned of an unnaturally pale face made whiter by the waves of dark hair surrounding it, a flash of cream-colored silk and rosary beads entwined in dead fingers. Childish terror came rushing back to Anna as she recalled the cold, waxy skin her lips had brushed against, and how she had burst into tears immediately afterward, rendering the remaining memory a blur.

She rose, feeling awkward, like she always did whenever she came here, embarrassed by the conflicting emotions that still ran through her. As a young girl, she’d harbored only feelings of resentment for her dead mother, who had abandoned her so early in life. Her father’s death following a car accident just before her tenth birthday had only amplified that sense of abandonment. It was not until after her twelfth birthday, while visiting her mother’s grave with her grandmother, that Anna had learned the truth about how her mother had died.

“Why isn’t Mamma buried next to Daddy, at St. Michael’s?”

Her grandmother had looked at her for a long while before answering.

“The Catholic church did not permit her to be buried at St. Michael’s,” she finally said.

“Why not?”

Her grandmother remained silent, but her eyes took on a troubled expression.

“Why not, Nonna?” she repeated.

After a moment her grandmother looked down at her and said, “Because she took her own life, Anna. This is a grave sin in the eyes of the Church. Because of it, she was denied a Catholic burial.”

“My mamma killed herself?” Anna felt the shock right down to her feet. “Why? Why did she do that?”

Her grandmother sighed, her face painted with sadness as she drew Anna close. “Your mother was ill, Anna. Her mind, it...”

Nonna’s voice broke, and tears welled up in her eyes. “She was not well. I did not know how bad it had gotten until...until it was too late.”

Anna shook off the memory of that long-ago conversation and looked around. The silence of the cemetery, mostly abandoned in the midday heat, was interrupted only by the occasional chirping of a bird from the nearby willow trees. Despite the brilliant sunshine, a sense of gloom stole over her. She wondered for the millionth time what had caused her mother to take her own life all those years ago. Her grandmother either did not know or had chosen not tell her. And, not for the first time, Anna also wondered if her mother’s depression might be hereditary. Perhaps that factored into the melancholy that had plagued her for most of her life, especially after... She tried to push the unwanted thought away, but remembrance flashed through her before she could stop it. She’d been...

* * * *

...riding her bike along the path next to the river, where it would be cooler, even though the fading sun tells her she should be getting home. Sudden shock, as rough hands grab her from behind, jerking her from the bike—shock that turns quickly to terror. Lying on her back on the ground, she looks up at the massive silhouette of a man, his facial features distorted by the nylon stocking over his head. Tape over her mouth, stifling her scream as she struggles to get away. A glimpse of her overturned bike, one wheel spinning lazily in the fading light. Rough ground scraping across her back as he drags her into the nearby trees. Then, the glint of steel and the feel of cold metal against her throat as he...

Stop.

* * * *

Anna willed herself to disconnect from the past, refusing to allow the black memory to have its way with her. She grabbed her purse from the ground and walked away from the grave, back to her waiting car. She hated coming here. Her visits to her mother’s gravesite always churned up emotions better left undisturbed.