Liquid Desires (39 page)

This was just what Annabella had said.

“Lorenzo
is
Flavia's father, isn't he?”

“I've told you that from the beginning!” she rasped. “I wish to God he weren't! I see now why Flavia was so desperate to believe he wasn't!”

“But that's not all of it, is it, Signora Volpi? Flavia looked just like your sister, didn't she? The same hair, the same color of eyes, almost the same face? But she had a lot of you in her, too. Your eyes aren't as green as hers but I've seen very much the same look in them as I have in Flavia's—when they weren't dull with all the pain she went through. And Flavia had your spirit, even some of your artistic sensibility.” He paused. Violetta Volpi looked afraid. She was waiting for his next words. “Flavia wasn't Regina's daughter. She was yours.”

Violetta drew in her breath sharply and cast a quick glance at Bernardo. But Urbino had been speaking very quietly.

“But how do you know?” she whispered, not even bothering to deny it.

“I really didn't know for certain until right now.” Urbino kept his voice low. “But a lot of things started to come together today at San Michele when I saw you and Lorenzo. You were very much together in your grief. You had both lost the same thing—a child—your child together. Right before I saw you together, I was thinking about how genes had worked out in my own family, actually chastising myself for trying to search out traits in Flavia that she might have inherited from Alvise or Lorenzo. It all eventually started to fall into place.”

Violetta wasn't looking at Urbino any longer but at her husband. He had regained a little color.

“But I don't understand,” Urbino went on, “why you were shouting at Lorenzo at Lago di Garda that Flavia wasn't his daughter. You both knew that she was, and Regina—”

Urbino stopped. His mind was whirling. What about Regina? He started to make some more connections.

Violetta's smile was chilling.

“Ah, Regina!” she repeated throatily. “My beautiful, disturbed sister Regina!” Violetta nodded her head slowly. “You think you know so much,” she said scornfully, “but you can't even begin to imagine the way it was!”

Violetta delivered this as if it were a boast.

“I knew Lorenzo before he met my sister. I hoped we would get married.”

Bruno Novembrini had said that Violetta had known Lorenzo before Regina, Urbino remembered, but he had said nothing about any possible future marriage.

“But once Lorenzo saw Regina—when she came back to the land of the living after one of her relapses!—he fell straightaway in love with her. He married
her
, not me,” she said bitterly, “just the way Alvise married your friend! It all happened so fast I was almost in shock! Bernardo, who knew that Lorenzo and I had been seeing each other, stepped in to console me. He had been interested in me for a long time. Several months after Lorenzo and Regina were married, Bernardo proposed and I accepted. He took me by surprise, asking me the night before he had to leave for almost half a year to put his business in order in the States, South America, and Asia. But what Bernardo didn't know—what
no
one knew—was that Lorenzo and I were still very much together. Not long after her marriage, Regina fell back into her pit again, and there I was, you see, still in love and seething with resentment against Regina. Everything was the way it had been before, you might say.” She gave a harsh laugh. “Except for a few things here and there—my sister was married to Lorenzo, I was engaged to marry a saint of a man, and I was also pregnant!”

Violetta suddenly remembered her husband and went over to him. She bent down and whispered something in his ear. Urbino filled a glass of water from the sink and brought it over but Violetta waved it away.

“He'll be all right, won't you, darling? Just rest until the ambulance comes. Whatever is taking it so long!”

Violetta looked impatiently out the door into the driving storm where lightning was still searing the scene, periodically illuminating the studio. Cracks of thunder reverberated beneath their feet.

Violetta led Urbino to the other side of the room and continued her story, her face occasionally bleached out by flashes of lightning. Whenever the thunder came, she paused for a few moments, obviously impatient to continue. Urbino had often seen people act the way Violetta was acting now, eager to reveal what they had concealed for years. Actually it was not unlike those many occasions when he himself had sat in a dark confessional and bared his soul to a silent priest on the other side of a screen.

“Yes, I was pregnant,” Violetta went on, “but Lorenzo forbade me to get an abortion, said he would tell Bernardo all about us when he returned from his business trip. Lorenzo has always liked being in control, and it suited him for me to have this child. He had a plan, and to my shame I went along with it. I had the baby five months later, and from then on she was Regina's, and only Regina's! I told her Alvise da Capo-Zendrini was the father. Lorenzo was afraid that you were on to us. It was because of something you said to him when you saw him last.”

Urbino remembered what it was—his guileless comment, meant to pacify Lorenzo, that sometimes children liked to fantasize that they had been dropped in the middle of the wrong family. Lorenzo's reaction had seemed to be anger, but it must have also been fear.

“But believe me, Signor Macintyre, everything was much easier than you might think. It amazed even us. Lorenzo arranged for Regina and me to go to a private clinic outside Milan, telling everyone Regina was pregnant. He let it be known that none of our family and friends should intrude. Regina needed this rest, he said, for both her pregnancy and her nerves, and I was there to help her. He reminded them that Regina had had a miscarriage the year before, which was true. You'd be surprised how far away people stay when there's illness—especially emotional illness. That—and the fact that everyone knew how much Lorenzo liked to be in control and wouldn't brook being crossed—kept everyone at a distance. Of course there were telephone conversations and letters, but no visits. Eventually Regina came back with ‘her' baby. Even Annabella believed it. She was the only one in a position to suspect anything, but Lorenzo kept Regina away from her and from everyone else for a long time.
We
—Lorenzo and I—were Regina's only keepers.”

“But surely it's impossible!” Urbino said. “However could you and Lorenzo have made Regina think that Flavia was her own daughter? My God, she couldn't have been so ill that she didn't know she hadn't given birth!”

“You're right, Signor Macintyre,” Violetta said with a smile of satisfaction. “Of course she knew! It would be preposterous to assume anything else, even given her illness. Regina was more than willing to go along with it, all the more so because Lorenzo convinced her how they'd be able to make the child their own. After the miscarriage the doctors didn't think she would ever be able to carry a baby full-term. She yearned for a child to take care of. She thought it would heal her to have someone who needed her so much.”

Tina Zuin, who had known Regina Brollo, had said something very similar during her late-night visit to the Palazzo Uccello.

“And here was Regina's own niece with the Grespi blood running in her veins,” Violetta continued. “Maybe Regina thought she was making up to me for all the times she had been the center of attention because of her beauty and her illness. At the time I didn't see any way out—the excuse everyone has who does something they shouldn't. I'm ashamed to say that I also saw it as a double revenge—against your friend the Contessa and my sister. They had both taken men from me.”

There was a twisted, almost diabolical logic in it that appalled Urbino as everything was laid out before him. Only a woman as emotionally disturbed as Regina Brollo would ever have agreed to raise her sister's child as her own. Yet he had heard of cases in which a mother raised her daughter's child as her own. What made the Brollo and Volpi situation so different was all the deceptions that had begun even before the birth of Flavia. Regina had believed she was helping her sister, her husband, and herself, while in reality she was just Violetta's and Lorenzo's pawn.

In the distance a siren wailed.

“What about the argument at Lago di Garda?” Urbino asked, trying to work out what had been going on in Regina's bedroom as Flavia and Mirko eavesdropped in the hallway outside. “That argument took place, didn't it?”

“Oh, yes, it took place all right, but not exactly the way Flavia and Ladislao Mirko heard it. Regina's periods of lucidity became fewer and farther between over the years. Eventually she became confused about the events of her own life. There were times when she didn't know who Lorenzo was, or me, and times when she thought her nurse was our mother. She began to think that Flavia
was
her daughter, but not by Lorenzo but by Alvise. Rather a fitting punishment for us, wasn't it?” Violetta added wryly. “To think we had always feared the opposite—that she would tell the truth to someone! Well, it all ended up making things easier for Lorenzo and me, of course, but I felt that I had lost my child twice over. The argument that Flavia and Mirko overheard wasn't what it seemed, as I said. I wasn't shouting at Lorenzo! I was shouting at Regina—trying to break through her wall, to make her realize—remember—that she
wasn't
Flavia's mother. I was going to bring her the birth certificate. I must have been in a strange state myself if I thought that would mean anything to her, but I was desperate. Lorenzo slapped
me
, to keep me quiet. Fourteen years of seeing Flavia grow up as Regina's daughter—when Bernardo and I couldn't have children of our own—had become more than I could bear. Thank God I had my painting.”

Violetta looked around her studio, at all the evidence of her art, with a blank expression. She seemed exhausted. Almost as an afterthought, she looked at what should have been another source of comfort to her, Bernardo. Urbino wondered how much Bernardo had known or suspected over the past twenty-six years.

“What happened when Flavia came to see you here on that Thursday evening?” Urbino asked as the siren continued to wail, drawing closer to the Ca' Volpi.

“I finally told her the truth,” she said in a low, defeated voice. “Can you see now why I didn't want to tell you anything about that visit, why I lied to the police? Lorenzo isn't the only one who has lived with lies. All those years I lied to Flavia—told her that this story about Alvise da Capo-Zendrini was a figment of her mother's disturbed imagination. But I couldn't take it anymore. I saw what was happening to Flavia, and hoped that the truth would help her, even if it threatened to destroy the love she had for me. So I told her. She wouldn't believe me until I showed her the birth certificate. I've never seen such pain and—and hatred in a person's face before.”

“Then she rushed off to see Lorenzo, didn't she?”

“Yes, to see if he would tell her the same thing—that she was
our
daughter and that Lorenzo and I had allowed her mother to believe that Alvise was her father. I went to Lorenzo an hour later, to deal with what I knew would be his fury, but Flavia had already left in a rage. The truth was too much for her. She rushed off and killed herself. Don't you see? We're both responsible—Lorenzo and I!”

Earlier Violetta had said that Annabella had murdered Flavia and now she was saying that she and Lorenzo were responsible for her suicide. Urbino was reminded of what he had suspected earlier—that more than one person had contributed to Flavia's death. When Urbino mentioned Annabella, Violetta's response was immediate.

“An evil-minded woman! She has always been filled with hatred—for me, for Regina, for Flavia, maybe even for Lorenzo!”

“And you saw how much she hated you all because of what she told you tonight, didn't you?”

Violetta had a dazed look on her face. She seemed even more depleted of energy than she had been a few minutes ago.

“Now you know how Flavia
really
felt about the Dalí painting, don't you, Signora Volpi?” Urbino asked. “Annabella told you all about Flavia and Lorenzo, didn't she?”

Violetta drew in her breath sharply.

“You know! But—” Surprise soon gave way to anger. “You tricked me! You knew all along. There must have been some way you could have let me know instead of leaving it to Annabella. Did you put her up to it?”

Her hands were trembling. She cast a quick, apprehensive glance at Bernardo.

“I had nothing to do with Annabella coming here to see you, Signora Volpi. I think you had better tell me as quickly as possible what happened here tonight. Lives could depend on it. Look at what almost happened to Bernardo.”

The ambulance boat was pulling up to the water steps.

“Her mouth was all twisted up when she said that Lorenzo had—had done terrible things to Flavia. How could I believe such a thing? How! But you're right. Suddenly I thought of how Flavia had torn out the Dalí picture from her catalog, and then I knew it was true. I remembered comments Flavia had made, hints she had dropped that I hadn't quite understood—and I knew! Maybe there were even things I saw myself but dismissed! It was as if I had known all along. I've read about these things in the newspapers—Italian fathers and their daughters, the closeness of the family.”

“But what made Annabella come to see you after all this time?”

“She said she had just found out about Lorenzo and me. She must have wanted to strike back at both of us—and this was her way of doing it! She kept this—this abomination to herself all these years just to drop it like a bomb when it would give her the most satisfaction. Well, she got her satisfaction tonight, damn her! And damn Lorenzo, too!”

The medics hurried across the garden to the studio and started to tend to Bernardo. Violetta and Urbino went over to see if they could be of any help but were told to move aside. When one of the medics said that Bernardo was out of immediate danger, Violetta smiled weakly at Urbino and seemed about to reach out to touch his arm, but drew her hand back. As Urbino watched the medics lifting Bernardo onto the stretcher, he went over the convoluted emotions and behavior of the Brollos and the Volpis, trying to fit into the picture the person who had ended up murdering Flavia, for he was now convinced more than ever that she had been murdered.