“There we go,” he says, putting his hands on my hips and yanking me toward him into a kiss. I attempt to dodge his lips by turning my head to the side, but he won’t let me. This time his touch doesn’t elicit steam and excitement. I’m cold inside, frozen solid. I don’t know how he can’t feel it, the icy block I’ve become.
He steps away with one more peck on my cheek and promises to find another time to see me today so we can make more solid plans. I agree and smile the perfect, frozen smile of the ice creature I’ve become.
I rush through the gate, late for the first time in my tenure at Atterbury. And as I hurry up the stairs into the office, the truck pulls away. It’s loaded with men in blue denim huddled together. One upturned face watches my ascent. Trombello. He acknowledges me with a nod, and I nod back; then I turn away and enter the office, shame my only companion as I cross the threshold.
CHAPTER 29
Elise
Present Day
Room 435
He knows. I can see it in his body language as soon as he lays eyes on me, like he’s fighting against his natural instincts to reach out and take me in his arms. His eyes are red, and he has a five o’clock shadow, which I rarely see since he shaves twice during the day to keep his jaw smooth.
“Hey! I thought you didn’t get in till later.” Act normal, I tell myself. Which shouldn’t be hard since I haven’t done anything wrong. I am normal.
“I got in an hour ago.”
“An hour ago?” The timing doesn’t make sense. If he didn’t know about the article, he would’ve told me he was coming in early. If he did know about it, how did he find out before me or any of my staff?
“Let’s get out of the hall.” He holds the door open and presses his body against the wall so I can get past him. He smells of Creed, and I want to hug him but can tell he wouldn’t welcome it.
My mom’s sitting on the couch in the living room area, and Mac stands behind one of the armchairs. Neither of them greets me at first. Then my mom extends her hand, inviting me to sit beside her.
“Oh, baby. Come here.”
I collapse next to my mother, grateful to have a sympathetic figure nearby. She engulfs me in a warm embrace, petting my hair like when I was a little girl. I refuse to cry. Perhaps I’m out of tears from my cry earlier today at the boutique, but I also worry that tears might read as guilt, and I’m not guilty, I remind myself again.
“Paparazzi are the lowest form of humans; am I right?” She kisses my temple and then holds my face in her hands.
“This is such a mess,” I say to my mom but also to Hunter, who’s taken the chair to the left of me, close enough to make eye contact but not close enough to reach out if he even wanted to.
“We know. We know. This is all too common during films. Isolation from loved ones. Close friendships form. It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”
“Wait, what?” I stiffen and pull out of her embrace, turning to Hunter. “No. There’s no truth to any of this story. I hardly know Father Patrick. He’s a priest, for God’s sake.”
Hunter’s brow is furrowed, and his lips are set in a straight line. He’s hurt—massively hurt. I don’t know how to convince him I’m telling the truth.
“Sure, baby. Sure. That’s the right way to handle it with the press. We know.”
“No, that’s the truth.” I feel like I’m being gaslit. Having feelings for someone, feelings, by the way, that we both walked away from instead of embracing, isn’t the same as cheating. “I want to know who leaked this, because there’s some information in that article that’s far too specific to come from a paparazzo with a camera and a misleading angle.”
“Leaked?” Mac asks, finally speaking up. He pushes off the back of the chair he’s been leaning on and crosses his arms. “We’ve all signed NDAs. No possible way there’s a leak from my crew.”
“It has to be,” I insist. “Antonio Trombello—that name. It’s in the article. How’d they get that information?”
“Research?” he says, “Same kind we’re doing. It’s all public record.”
I bounce back and forth between looking at my mother’s and Mac’s expressions. My mother’s face is dewy and made up, but every visible crease drags downward in a sad, droopy kind of way. And Mac seems nowhere close to concerned or worried about the article.
“I’m sorry—what’s going on here? Doesn’t anyone care about this pile of bullshit? We might not be able to do anything to stop the story, but can’t we all agree to be on the same side?”
Mac nods at my mom, and my mom gives him a knowing look. She lets go of my arm and reaches around behind her for something. Staring off into space, Hunter sits stoically, his toe tapping against the wooden leg of the coffee table.
“There are a few things you should know, Lisey. Here.” She places the familiar album on my lap and unties the green bow on the side. “I know you recognize this.”
“Nonna’s scrapbook,” I say in agreement, still confused.
She opens the album to the middle where a paper bookmark sticks out. The yellowing pages hold the same drawings I remember from when I was a little girl: one, a hand-drawn Italian villa with climbing vines dripping off the awning of the house; another, a waterfall in the middle of a jungle in watercolor. There’s another drawing of an old woman sitting with a basket of kittens in her lap, cobblestones beneath her feet. I was right—it’s the same book my grandmother shared with me when I was younger. We’d play pretend with each picture, making up stories about where it was and who lived there.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what this has to do with anything.”
“It’ll all make sense soon, baby,” my mother says, sliding her finger under the cardstock of the image of a statue in a park.
“What are you doing? We aren’t supposed to take them out. Nonna said they’re fragile.” My instinct is to stop her from ruining something my grandmother cherished, but the card is out. There’s writing on the back and a canceled stamp up in the corner.
“They’re postcards?” I ask, confused why my globe-trotting grandma collected postcards from someone else’s travels. It seems more likely that she’d go to the locale herself.
“Read it,” my mom says, handing the card to me. It’s in a tidy hand, black ink, likely penned by a man. It’s in Italian.
“I can’t.” My mother used to claim Italian as a second language, but it turned out she only knew a few phrases.
“Not the whole thing. Just the name—at the bottom.” She points to the compact script that’s small but easy to read.
“Antonio Trombello?” I ask, not believing what I’m seeing. “Like the man in the photograph? The priest from the POW camp?”
“Yes, darling. As far as we can tell.” The postcard is dated 1954. But I remember her adding illustrated cards to the album even when I was a little girl.
“And so—what does this mean? In your opinion.” I flip through the pages, stunned at the number of postcards contained within. “What does it mean to us and Nonna?”
“He was a prisoner at the internment camp while your grandmother was there. They remained close until his passing in 1999,” she says, locating the picture I’d given her earlier that week. “I think this man is your grandfather.”
CHAPTER 30
Vivian
Thursday, June 17, 1943