My heartrate slows a little as I take the book. It’s heavier than I expect, and there’s a sick sense of something in my belly. Whatever is inside here, it’s not good.
“Go on,” urges the old man.
There’s a little resistance as I open the book, and I realize it’s not really a book but an album or a very expensive scrapbook. No, not that. What’s inside doesn’t look like happy memories. The opposite. It’s a reckoning of sorts. A record keeping.
“Do you read Italian? I thought maybe with the Spanish background?”
I shake my head no, but I can make out the headlines of the newspaper clippings inside. The quality isn’t great. I’m guessing the clippings have degraded over time. There are several articles from different papers. Headlines in bold letters. Large photographs. Smaller text that’s too hard for me to read. But I guess I don’t need to read more than the headlines to understand.
He looks younger, Giovanni. It’s just a few years, but there’s a difference. I know it’s not youth that makes him look so different. It’s something else, and that thing, whatever it is, there’s no longer place for it on his face. On his person.
In one photo he’s surrounded by countless people, and he’s walking away. Or being led away. He’s looking over his shoulder, though, so I can see his face. In his eyes I see a hardness, like the beginnings of what I sometimes glimpse now. What time has turned into a ruthlessness.
“Love triangle, they called it,” Mr. Santa Maria says.
I glance at him, and he smiles ruefully as he turns the pages for me until we come to another image. One of Angelica. A different one than the one I saw in Giovanni’s library.
He touches the picture tenderly, almost like he’s touching her face. He then meets my eyes.
“I understand Giovanni thought he was in love. He was a child, after all, but Angelica,” he shakes his head, looks back down at her pictures. “She was mine. Always.”
“What about your wife?” I ask stupidly.
His face has lost any tenderness when he looks at me. “Our love died a long time before Angelica entered our lives. It’s something my son refused to understand then. Refuses to accept now.”
He turns back to the first page, and I look at the photo again. Giovanni in handcuffs. Four policemen are close by, and more stand around, holding the crowd back. Mr. Santa Maria looks me square in the eye when he tells me the next part.
“He hurt her when she told him. When she told him she didn’t love him. That she loved me.”
“Hurt her?”
He watches me for a long moment, and I think I understand his meaning. I know I do. But he’s biding his time. Drawing out the horror. “He raped her, my dear. Violently. She became pregnant, and he insisted she terminate. She couldn’t stand up to him. Giovanni will always get his way, no matter how hard he has to push, no matter who he has to hurt.”
Ice sweeps through my veins. I stiffen, as if I’ve turned to stone.
“No, I didn’t think he’d tell you that part.”
I look down at the image again. I don’t know the word for rape in Italian.
“I don’t understand,” I say, my face buried in the book.
“She committed suicide after that. She couldn’t live with herself, live with the violation, the murder of her unborn child. And then he came after me. These stories, the pictures, the papers love this sort of drama, don’t they? Family torn apart, father and son at each other’s throats, a beautiful, innocent girl the one left hurt—tragically—between them.”
I shake my head, close the book, and shove it toward him. “I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do that.”
He puts it calmly back into my lap. “Keep it. Read it for yourself. You don’t have to take my word for it. See in here. In history. Robert,” he calls out. The man comes, helps him to his feet. Helps him into his wheelchair. “And when you have finished reading it, you can come to me. I imagine you may not feel very safe in Giovanni’s protection.”
I remain sitting there, looking at the carving on the wood, thinking about his words, and in particular, that last word.
“Take care with that book, Emilia. Keep it hidden from my son. And, more importantly, take care he doesn’t do to you what he did to her.”
I look up at him, and his gaze doesn’t release mine for a long time. Not until he nods, and Robert wheels him out of the office and I’m alone again. Alone with the book that sits as heavy as a brick on my lap.20GiovanniPicking up the men who raped Emilia wasn’t hard. They weren’t expecting me and had all but forgotten the event of four years ago. They remember now, though. Clear as day.