doesn’t even know your name, or mine for that matter. He never cared enough to find out.
I wonder if he ever got his precious son. I wonder if he’s got six precious sons. God, am I stupid. Here I’ve been talking about hiring a detective to get Gabe when I could hire a detective to get me all the information I ever wanted about Dominick Giovanni.
Wait. Is that sick of me? Is it an obsession? I must think about it, truly think about my motives. What should such information mean to me? He’s nothing to me save the man who betrayed me, who took my innocence—doesn’t that sound Gothic?—the man who made me feel like dirt.
The bitterness is still there, deep and grinding. And now another man has betrayed me. One a man who didn’t want you in any manner whatsoever, the other a man who wanted to molest you, a child. I have failed you twice, my darling Rafaella. I promise it will not happen again.
The Bridges
Long Island, New York
February 2001
Rafaella closed the journal, slowly fastening the clasp. It was a particularly fine Spanish red leather, intricately tooled, and just as finely locked.
And she’d picked the lock. This was the second volume on which she’d picked the lock. She closed her eyes a moment, leaning back against her mother’s desk chair, the chair Margaret had very probably sat in to write in her journals since she’d married Charles Winston Rutledge III some eleven years before.
Rafaella had come into her mother’s room several hours before, looking for some stationery, and searched through her desk. She’d found the stationery and she’d also found the small latch that, when manipulated properly, released two hidden drawers. And in those two drawers she’d found the journals. She’d never known they existed. She’d hesitated only briefly, then begun reading.
Rafaella remembered the phone call that had jerked her awake at midnight. Her stepfather, Charles, sounding calm and controlled, but Rafaella could make out the underlying fear and anxiety.
“Your mother was struck by a drunk driver, Rafaella. You must come right away. The doctors don’t know. She’s in a coma. They don’t know.”
His voice had broken and Rafaella had stared at the phone.
“No,” she whispered.
Charles, drawing in his breath, regained his poise. “Come right away, my dear. I’ll have Larkin meet you at JFK. Catch the seven- A.M . flight, all right?”
“She’s alive?”
“Yes, she’s alive. A coma.”
Her mother was still in a coma two days later. Peaceful, her face not older, but strangely youthful,her lovely pale blond hair combed and fastened with barrettes behind her ears. And all those damnable lines running in and out of her arms.
So quiet. Her mother lay there, so very quiet.
“Rafaella!”
It was Benjamin, her stepbrother, calling from the hallway.
“Just a moment,” she called back. She rose stiffly, carefully laid the journal back in the desk drawer, re-locked it, and went to have dinner with the family.
Four
Pine Hill Hospital
Long Island, New York
February 2001
Rafaella sat on one side of her mother’s bed, Charles on the other. She was looking at her mother, but her thoughts kept returning to the newspaper clippings that had been stacked in neat piles in one of the secret drawers. So many photos, some grainy, others quite clear. And she couldn’t stop telling herself over and over that her real father was a man whose name was Dominick Giovanni, and he was a crook.
Her mother was lying in a private suite in the east wing of the private hospital, Pine Hill. The decor reminded Rafaella of the suite she’d stayed in once at the Plaza—muted colors, and very expensive. Except for the regulation bed, the slender tubes in her mother’s nose, and the lines in her arms, her mother could have been sleeping. They’d been here, sitting quietly, for nearly a half-hour now.
Rafaella’s stepfather, Charles Winston Rutledge III, was the quintessential WASP, old money, prep school
I wonder if he ever got his precious son. I wonder if he’s got six precious sons. God, am I stupid. Here I’ve been talking about hiring a detective to get Gabe when I could hire a detective to get me all the information I ever wanted about Dominick Giovanni.
Wait. Is that sick of me? Is it an obsession? I must think about it, truly think about my motives. What should such information mean to me? He’s nothing to me save the man who betrayed me, who took my innocence—doesn’t that sound Gothic?—the man who made me feel like dirt.
The bitterness is still there, deep and grinding. And now another man has betrayed me. One a man who didn’t want you in any manner whatsoever, the other a man who wanted to molest you, a child. I have failed you twice, my darling Rafaella. I promise it will not happen again.
The Bridges
Long Island, New York
February 2001
Rafaella closed the journal, slowly fastening the clasp. It was a particularly fine Spanish red leather, intricately tooled, and just as finely locked.
And she’d picked the lock. This was the second volume on which she’d picked the lock. She closed her eyes a moment, leaning back against her mother’s desk chair, the chair Margaret had very probably sat in to write in her journals since she’d married Charles Winston Rutledge III some eleven years before.
Rafaella had come into her mother’s room several hours before, looking for some stationery, and searched through her desk. She’d found the stationery and she’d also found the small latch that, when manipulated properly, released two hidden drawers. And in those two drawers she’d found the journals. She’d never known they existed. She’d hesitated only briefly, then begun reading.
Rafaella remembered the phone call that had jerked her awake at midnight. Her stepfather, Charles, sounding calm and controlled, but Rafaella could make out the underlying fear and anxiety.
“Your mother was struck by a drunk driver, Rafaella. You must come right away. The doctors don’t know. She’s in a coma. They don’t know.”
His voice had broken and Rafaella had stared at the phone.
“No,” she whispered.
Charles, drawing in his breath, regained his poise. “Come right away, my dear. I’ll have Larkin meet you at JFK. Catch the seven- A.M . flight, all right?”
“She’s alive?”
“Yes, she’s alive. A coma.”
Her mother was still in a coma two days later. Peaceful, her face not older, but strangely youthful,her lovely pale blond hair combed and fastened with barrettes behind her ears. And all those damnable lines running in and out of her arms.
So quiet. Her mother lay there, so very quiet.
“Rafaella!”
It was Benjamin, her stepbrother, calling from the hallway.
“Just a moment,” she called back. She rose stiffly, carefully laid the journal back in the desk drawer, re-locked it, and went to have dinner with the family.
Four
Pine Hill Hospital
Long Island, New York
February 2001
Rafaella sat on one side of her mother’s bed, Charles on the other. She was looking at her mother, but her thoughts kept returning to the newspaper clippings that had been stacked in neat piles in one of the secret drawers. So many photos, some grainy, others quite clear. And she couldn’t stop telling herself over and over that her real father was a man whose name was Dominick Giovanni, and he was a crook.
Her mother was lying in a private suite in the east wing of the private hospital, Pine Hill. The decor reminded Rafaella of the suite she’d stayed in once at the Plaza—muted colors, and very expensive. Except for the regulation bed, the slender tubes in her mother’s nose, and the lines in her arms, her mother could have been sleeping. They’d been here, sitting quietly, for nearly a half-hour now.
Rafaella’s stepfather, Charles Winston Rutledge III, was the quintessential WASP, old money, prep school
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