His whole body was pressing forwards, leaning across that infinite space between them, and I swear in that moment I could feel the anger rolling off him. If looks could kill, my father – my ignorant, oblivious father – would have dropped dead on the spot.
Luca wasn’t moving. He was holding himself together, all his energy bound up in keeping still as he crushed his hands in and out of fists at his sides. His nostrils flared, shallow breaths swelling and falling in his chest. His lips were moving, but there was nothing coming out.
I had seen Luca angry, and I had seen Luca calm, but I had never seen him struggle so hard for composure. I had never seen him so scarily unhinged. He was trying to hold it all inside him, but all it would take was one thing, one tiny thing, to unleash it.
I stared so hard at him my eyes began to hurt.
Just look at me. Don’t look at him. Look at me.
But he was glaring, unblinking, at my father, assessing him with the deadly quiet of a lion stalking its prey. And why wouldn’t he be?
Here was the man who had killed his father. Luca knew the truth – he had seen Evelina’s ruby ring. He knew my father’s protested innocence had been a farce. Here was the murderer, standing unprotected not ten feet away from him, with a single uninterested prison warden sulking underneath a faraway tree. He wouldn’t be quick enough to stop anything, not if Luca pulled a gun.
Not if Luca lunged for my father. It could all be over in a heartbeat. His revenge was there for the taking.
Please don’t, I implored. Please don’t do anything.
Millie was embracing my father, inching him back into the circle, away from Luca’s glare.
Do something, Sophie. Do anything.
Everyone was staring at my father – the great mystery of Michael Gracewell, who was once again walking like a free man among them. No one was looking at me any more. No one was thinking about my mother. The day had been turned on its head.
Say something. Say anything.
I had to make my father disappear. I had to pull their focus from him. I had to redirect Luca’s thoughts. I had to calm him down, somehow, without drawing attention to any of it.
The words came flying back to me, from the only poem I knew, and the only one that would work just then. Thank you, Mary Elizabeth Frye.
‘Do not stand at my grave and weep,’ I said, my voice croaky with fear. I cleared my throat as, one by one, heads turned back to me. ‘I am not there. I do not sleep.’
Come on, Luca. Come on.
‘I am a thousand winds that blow.’ My father stopped whispering to Millie and looked up at me. ‘I am the diamond glints on snow.’
Stay with me. Don’t look across the circle. Don’t look at Luca.
‘I am the sunlight on ripened grain.’ Millie nodded at me as if to say Keep going. ‘I am the gentle autumn rain.’
Luca was pulling his gaze from my father, slowly, slowly, like the weight of it was a great, hulking thing. ‘When you awaken in the morning’s hush,’ I said, my voice cracking, ‘I am the swift uplifting rush.’
Please don’t hurt him. ‘Of quiet birds in circled flight.’ Please don’t take this day from her. ‘I am the soft stars that shine at night.’
Luca was looking at me again. His features had clouded over. ‘Do not stand at my grave and weep.’ My eyes were swimming with unshed tears. ‘I am not there, I do not sleep.’ And then my dad was breaking rank, crossing the grassy mound, coming towards me with arms outstretched. ‘Do not stand at my grave and cry.’ Everyone was watching us. A father reuniting with his daughter, and I realized I couldn’t push him away, no matter how much I wanted to. ‘I am not there.’ I blinked and the tears streamed down my face. ‘I did not die.’
‘Oh, Sophie, sweetheart.’ My father flung his arms around me. He pulled me into his chest, and I collapsed into him, staining his shirt with my tears. I hated him with a passion so fierce it burnt inside me, but I needed that hug – that embrace – and all the lies that went with it, because beneath all the anger, beneath every shred of betrayal, I still loved him. I still wanted him to be OK. I needed that hug because it was keeping him from Luca. It was keeping my dad safe.
We stood like that for a long time, my back to the others, my body a shield between the murderer who had lied to me my whole life, and the assassin who had been watching over me in his absence.
When my father pulled back from me, and the cold air rushed into the space between us, drying icy tears on our cheeks, everyone else was crying too, and Luca Falcone was gone.
That was the greatest gift he could have given me. The willingness to walk away. And I knew, had I been faced with the same dilemma, I would have failed.
CHAPTER NINE
WARNING
‘Who told you?’ I was trying very hard to keep my voice under control, conscious of the prison guard hovering nearby.
My father patted the empty seat beside him. ‘Can you sit down and we can talk about this properly?’
I kept my arms folded across my chest, my feet planted in the grass in front of the granite slab. ‘Who told you?’ I repeated.
He tilted his chin so he could see my whole face, the entirety of my disgust. His eyes were impossibly large from this angle. ‘Ursula wrote to me,’ he admitted. ‘She was afraid you had forgotten to tell me about it.’
‘If I wanted you here, I would have told you.’
‘I know.’ He had knitted his hands together on his lap, and was digging his fingernails into his knuckles.
‘And yet you came. You came and you made a scene out of it.’
‘She was my wife,’ he said, as if I needed to be reminded. ‘I love her and I grieve her. And you are my daughter, and I have every right to be here with you.’
‘No,’ I said, leaning closer and dropping my voice to barely more than a whisper. ‘I’m the daughter of Michael Gracewell, and Michael Gracewell is gone. I am not your daughter, Vince.’
My father jerked backwards. ‘Don’t act like this, Sophie. This isn’t like you.’
‘You don’t know me,’ I snapped. ‘And evidently, I don’t know you. All I know is a collection of lies you told me, and all those horrible things you did. All those lives you took!’
‘Keep your voice down!’ Colour rose to his cheeks; his eyes, just like mine, grew dark with warning. ‘Are you trying to get me locked up for the rest of my life?’
I could have punched him. Right then, I could have punched him, but I didn’t because some stupid, vulnerable, childish part of me was still seeing my dad in front of me. The one who used to read me Dr. Seuss before bed, the one who would lift me on to his shoulders and spin me around when I needed cheering up. ‘Do you realize just how much you’ve hurt me? How much you’ve betrayed me?’
He slumped in his seat, the black suit seeming to swallow him up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I understand what I’ve done. What I’ve lost.’
No. Not this conversation. I was already teetering on the verge of tears, every last emotion from the day lining up inside me, pressing tiny hands against my heart. I stood back, widening the gap between us. ‘Where’s Jack?’
He looked up at me, something sparking in his gaze. He knew. He knew.
‘Do not lie to me one more time.’
He raised his chin, defiance meeting my own. ‘Sophie—’