The Year of Luminous Love (20 page)

That night she boarded a cross-country bus under an assumed name and rode it to Nashville. She had an aunt there, an old woman who’d told her to come if she ever got away from her situation. Gwen nursed Eden, ate peanut butter crackers and raisins cross-country, and counted every penny, hoping her money would last her on the long bus ride.

Once inside the Nashville bus terminal, she clutched baby Eden and called Aunt Myrtle, then waited under a garish streetlight until the gray-haired woman arrived in a rust bucket of a car. They arrived at Myrtle’s house—this house—miles from the city, a safe haven. Gwen’s parents had disowned her, unable to accept a daughter who was a “bad seed,” but Myrtle liked her and would help her with the baby. Gwen’s affliction, her bipolar disorder, was growing worse. It was the thing that Eden’s father hated most about her. The thing he’d tried to beat out of Gwen with his fists but couldn’t.

When Eden was two, Myrtle died, leaving the house to Gwen, where she lived as a neighborhood built up around the old house. She raised Eden and struggled against the rising tide of her illness, taking meds and abandoning them because none of them were ever quite right. None made her feel “normal.” Eden had suffered because of it, but it had also helped make the girl stronger and self-reliant. Until Tony came along. No matter. Eden was far away from him for now.

Gwen opened the top drawer of her dresser and pulled out an old tin box, her only keepsake from her hellish childhood. She opened it and removed a roll of money wrapped in a rubber band. Her habit of secretly hiding money had never changed. A little here, a little there. Piggly Wiggly job to her rescue. In the bathroom, she grabbed a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a few cosmetics. Her hand skimmed over the row of medicine bottles that kept her illness at bay. She disliked taking them,
but she had taken them faithfully for months, sensing that Eden would need her well enough to handle breaking away from Tony. Without the meds, she’d feel like her old self in a few days. She’d hook up with others in Florida, a collection of homeless misfits she’d met over the years with mental problems bigger than hers. They were her friends. They understood her, accepted her “as is.”

Gwen hurried downstairs. Outside she threw her bag into the car. Only one more thing to do. She took out her cell phone, made two calls, spoke briefly to the recipients, then placed the cell under the right rear tire of the car in the driveway.

She got into the car and took deep breaths. She looked out, staring at the place that had been her home for almost twenty years. Tony would return to an empty house. Maybe he’d burn it to the ground. So be it. “This one’s for you, baby girl,” she said, for all the times through the years she’d left her child to manage on her own.

Gwen started the car and backed over the phone, turning it into a tangle of crushed circuits and plastic dust, then drove off into the night.

“Look! It’s Rome.” Arie pressed her nose to the plane’s window, watching the clouds part and shred like paper as the plane descended over a great sprawling city.

“Where? I can’t see a thing with your head in the way,” Eden grumbled.

Arie leaned back, tears misting her eyes. She glanced across the aisle at Ciana, who was straining against her seat belt to catch sight of the Eternal City.

“Big city,” Eden said, awestruck.

“Almost three million people,” Arie said, dabbing her eyes.

“Are you crying?” Eden turned from the window toward Arie.

“Just a little overwhelmed. I never thought I’d actually come here.”

“We all needed a vacation. Think of it as the senior trip we never got,” Ciana offered.

Arie’s gaze connected with Ciana’s and she mouthed,
“Thank you.”

Ciana waved off the gratitude. She was cross-eyed from lack of sleep. Who wouldn’t be after chasing the sun across the Atlantic for over nine hours? They’d left Atlanta on time and were arriving in Rome midmorning. She’d attempted to sleep, but her head was too full of the drama of leaving and the excitement of the upcoming months. All the travel info the agency had given her urged them to hit the ground running, stay awake, and go to bed at a regular time. Get on Italy’s time schedule as soon as possible. She yawned, hoping she could.

The plane landed. The girls disembarked into the chaos of the crowded airport, the sound of foreign languages, and the long lines leading through customs. Once their passports were stamped and they gathered their luggage, they emerged into the bustle of the outer area of the terminal, where other crowds waited to greet family and friends.

Ciana was heartened to see a woman holding a sign with the word
Beauchamp
written on it. “Over there,” she told her friends. “Our greeter.”

The Tennessee agent had said they’d have a go-between in Rome to help them navigate and negotiate the rental car, money exchange, and any other hurdles. The woman was warm and friendly and spoke perfect English with a distinctive Italian accent that Arie thought charming. In no time they were in their rental car armed with tourist brochures, maps, and a GPS navigator in the car’s dashboard. “The hardest part is getting out of the city,” the woman told them.

Eden elected to drive and bravely thrust the car into the snarl of noonday traffic, dodging cars, buses, scooters, bicycles, and pedestrians; managing city roundabouts; and waving at motorists’ blasting horns when she veered in front of them.

“Don’t kill us,” Ciana warned, her knuckles white on the car’s armrest.

“If I’m too nice, they’ll plow me down.”

Eden kept glancing in the rearview mirror, looking for a tail, some goon of Tony’s who couldn’t possibly be there.

Arie stared out the windows dreamily, unaffected by the traffic congestion. “We are going to spend some time in Rome, aren’t we?” she asked as the car passed ancient ruins in the heart of the city.

“We are,” Ciana assured her. “There’s just so much to see and do, but that’s why we’re staying three months—so we’ll have time to do it all.”

The drive up to the Tuscany region and their villa was less than a hundred miles, and once they left Rome, traffic fell off significantly. The two-lane road passed fields of grazing animals and a line of cypress trees, olive trees, and a vineyard. A blazing sun shone down through air pure and sweet.

By late afternoon, the car was at last winding up the narrow road to their villa. When they crested a hill, they saw a lovely two-story house and heard the GPS announce that they had arrived at their destination.

“Wow,” Eden said, turning off the engine. “Not too shabby.”

Ciana felt a wave of relief. The place looked as charming as it had on the rental website, with cream-colored stucco, a red barrel tile roof, and dark wood trim under the eaves and around the door and window frames. “Let’s check it out.”

The front door had a lockbox hanging on the doorknob, and Ciana punched in the code the rental agency had given her. She removed the door key and unlocked the door, then stepped inside with Arie and Eden tight on her heels. They took a breath in unison. The foyer was open to a great room
that soared two stories. A dark wood staircase off to one side led up to a second floor with a walk-around interior balcony and doors standing open. “Bedrooms,” Ciana said, motioning to the upstairs area.

Downstairs, built-in sofas lined two walls, a modern kitchen claimed another wall, and a bank of windows and French doors led outside to a bricked patio on the fourth wall. On a rustic table beside the kitchen sat an enormous plastic-wrapped welcome basket heaped with food, fresh fruit, and two bottles of wine.

Eden headed straight to the basket, untied the ribbon, and rescued one of the wine bottles. “We don’t have to be old ladies to drink in Italy.”

Ciana scoffed. “Age requirements never stopped us before.”

Eden found wineglasses in the kitchen, uncorked the wine, and poured three glasses. She passed them to her friends. “To us,” she said, raising her glass for the others to tap.

“To the best three months of our lives,” Arie added.

“And to fun, fun, fun,” Ciana said. She said it as if a burden had been lifted from her. Tennessee and Bellmeade were far away, and so was her day-to-day grind and constant concern for Eden. She’d been at loose ends ever since Olivia’s death and needed the break.

They flopped onto a sofa, passed around crackers and cheese, prosciutto slices, and several varieties of olives from the basket, and sipped their wine. After a minute of contented silence, Arie put her glass down on a coffee table, looked at her two friends, and asked, “Okay. Will one of you please tell me what’s going on between you? What secret are you two keeping from me?”

Ciana and Eden exchanged guilty glances. Eden said, “Why do you think—”

Arie interrupted, “You have been acting paranoid ever since we left my party. Don’t tell me otherwise. I watched you throw your cell phone away in Atlanta, and you acted as nervous as a squirrel in a taxidermist shop for most of the flight.”

Eden shrugged. “Can’t use our old cells over here anyway. No reason to hang on to it.”

“And the villa has a phone if we need to call anyone. Plus I have calling cards,” Ciana added. In truth, she and Eden had opted out of rental cell phones. Wasn’t their whole purpose to get away from everything? “And I lugged my laptop to send email to make everybody at home sick with envy.”

Arie ignored Ciana’s devilish grin. “You’re not telling me what the two of you are hiding. I’m in this group, too, you know.”

Ciana said, “It’s your story, Eden. Tell her.”

Eden blew out a long-held breath. “I was always going to tell you, Arie, but not until we arrived in Italy.”

“I believe we’re here.”

“We are.” Eden took a gulp from her wineglass and launched into her story about her years with Tony, of her naiveté, of his slow but steady takeover of her life, of his obsession with her, of how she’d been ensnared beyond escape. And she told them both of his involvement in drug trafficking, of how he hooked kids at their very own middle and high schools, and of Meghan’s plunge into prostitution and death by overdose. It took a while for her to get it all out. Arie and Ciana sat spellbound and were horrified about Meghan’s death.

“But he … he never hooked you? With the drugs, I mean.” Fear from concern creased Arie’s brow.

“He said he’d hurt me if I did drugs. I believed him. For some reason he saw me as this pure, flawless woman. A symbol of some kind. Totally unrealistic. He could defile me, but
no one else could.” She shivered. “I was his prisoner, and I couldn’t escape. He had eyes on me all the time.”

“Why didn’t you say something to somebody?”

“I was afraid. I knew too much about his drug business.” Eden’s voice grew small. “And I was ashamed of who I’d become.”

Ciana had known the relationship had been difficult, but hearing details was truly terrifying. Soon all three of them were crying and wiping their tears on napkins from the basket. By the time her story was over, the wine bottle was empty and the napkins were wadded in a soggy heap.

“I wish you’d told me this back home,” Arie said in a quivery voice.

“I felt that I couldn’t tell anyone because of the drugs. What if I was sent to jail? Besides, you had enough on your plate,” Eden said. “I only told Ciana what I had to. This trip was my get-out-of-jail free card.”

Arie picked at a napkin still in her hands. “So this wasn’t all about me, then? You figured out how coming here could be for both of us.”

Ciana nodded, unable to admit that coming had been about her too. She had planned the trip to flee from the temptation of Jon Mercer, from her desire for him and his for her. She had run from her fear that she might betray Arie if she stayed. And of knowing that even if she’d fled to Nashville and college classes, it wouldn’t have changed anything between them. She would have given in if she found herself alone with him again. She felt weak and pathetic. Coming to Italy was her fail-safe.

“And the money was from an inheritance?” Arie asked skeptically. “Ciana, I know how your grandmother was. She would have earmarked the money to be used for something
other than just a good time. Olivia was practical and Bellmeade was everything to her.”