Forgotten (52 page)

“
How do I
know all this?”

Her
nod was wary, slight.

“Milo.”

Mama gasped.

With all
Mama’s planning and manipulation she had never considered the one
other person that had actually been there at the time. A very
confused, very aware, very clever eight year old.

And unlike
me, one who didn
’t forget.

“
He
remembers
the blood, Papa yelling at you
not to lose the baby. Milo also remembers me in a hospital crib, so
excited to have a sister. He imagined all the things big brothers
do, how he would teach me to ride a bike and so on. And then you
grabbed him and disappeared. You deprived him of his family. And
with no plausible explanation.”

I searched
for a reaction
, caring or
otherwise.

Nothing.

“
Seven years
passed before I
’m with you again. But I’m
not the baby Milo remembered. He sees a girl horribly frightened,
with no memory. He hears the gut-wrenching pleas of Alice Polinski,
bleating her love for me, only to have a restraining order slammed
on her. Milo’s fifteen by then, understands a whole lot
more.

He
doesn
’t feel comfortable turning to
either you or Papa. Instead, he turns to Aunt Lia. Lia connects the
dots that a fifteen-year-old couldn’t. She reaches out to Alice,
promises her unfailing support. Helped her buy the old house
outside of Nambour.”

When I asked
Lia about the Nambour house, its sparse furnishings and disrepair,
she told me a story about a delightful little cottage, with
vibrant, pristine gardens and a colorful floral archway. “That was
Alice’s
true
home,” she had said to me. “Where her heart
belonged. The Macanettis gave it to her as a gift. It’s also where
you and Alice lived. It was her life-long dream that one day she
could bring you back there.”

From that
moment on, an unbearable sadness, one I
’d
never experienced before - other than Simon - permanently implanted
itself in me.

I returned to my mother. “Lia kept Alice
informed about me, like sports carnivals, school fetes,
graduations. And Alice would loyally attend every one of them,
watch me from a safe distance.”

Mama scoffed, shook her head. Not a hair
fell out of place. “Your figures.”

Very likely.
“Alice never once approached me. To her, I seemed truly happy. And
she didn’t want to upset that.” Alice also feared that meeting me
could trigger my memories of Araneya and that the bad memories
would far outweigh the good.

“How very noble of her,” Mama hissed.

“Yes, it was.”

“And Milo told you this?”

I hadn’t
seen Milo since Christmas day. But Milo had seen Lia, trusted her
to tell me everything I needed to know. That it was time for him to
search his own path.

I told Mama.
She wore the expression of one betrayed.

“
Milo
encouraged Alice to wait inside Zephyr, argued that it was safer
than being on the streets. After you killed her, he suffered
tremendous guilt.”

Like a
startled chameleon, Mama’s betrayed look changed colors.
Tears,
real
ones, bubbled and fell; wet, black mascara
soiled her once immaculate handkerchief. “None of it was his
fault.”

“
I
know that. It would be nice if he
did. And for him to hear it from
you.”

I thought of
Milo. Lia explained how, every year, without complaint, Milo would
place Alice’s hand-made birthday cards under my pillow, how he
protected me for Alice’s sake, and very likely for the boy who once
long ago, stared at his newborn sister and vowed to do that anyway.
I still had difficulty associating
that
Milo with my own, caused by
twenty years of conditioning.

“
You have to
understand,” Lia had said to me, “the years away from your Papa and
from a sister Milo never got to know, didn’t help him. Your
mother’s family coddled him, worshipped him like some phenomenal
god. But Milo was smart. He played their ridiculous games. And his
often cool façade was the unfortunate by-product.”

Lia
had also given Simon the photos for the wedding
album, courtesy of Alice. I wonder now, if it had been intentional
on Lia’s behalf, hoping that once I saw them, I would begin a
series of questions that would eventually lead me back to
Alice.

With much reluctance, I returned to my
mother. “Lia told Alice the truth about my birth, willingly gave
her the ammunition to do what she wanted in case you or Papa caused
her any problems. When you refused Alice permission to see me, she
threatened you with it.”

Alice Polinski
’s
second mistake
.

“
Imagine
what everyone would think, what the family would think, if they
knew what type of mother you really were. That was Alice’s
true
threat to you,
wasn’t it?”

And one that cost Alice her life.

“Claudia….”

The next part was the hardest. The one that
made me sick beyond any talented imagination I bore.

I wished, I
hoped, I prayed
I was wrong.

“
Last night,
when I visited Papa, he told me to be careful of whom I trusted. He
kept looking over my shoulder as if that person was there. I
thought he meant Lia. I was wrong. He didn’t know you had already
left the room.”

“You think he was talking about me?”

She said it
with such chaste innocence. I didn’t know whether to slap her or
clap her.

I continued
regardless. “When Ethan came to our home, you recognized him and
you panicked. You then turned to the only person who could help
you.
Papa.
You told him about Ethan. You told him about how you had
killed Alice. And that’s when Papa had his heart
attack.”

I
didn
’t need an answer. It was stamped
across every disturbing, foreign line on my mother’s face. I didn’t
know what was worse. My poor, trusting Papa believing that the
woman he had strove to protect and love was actually a cold-blooded
murderer, or the fact that she so publicly tried to blame his heart
attack on me.

“
You know
what’s ironic?” I said. “If you hadn’t killed Alice, Iacovelli and
Souza would still be alive, Milo wouldn’t have felt the need to
disappear, I wouldn’t have had two attempts on my life and Papa
would be home strong and healthy. My discovering your dirty secret
seems so trivial now, don’t you think?”

I didn’t
know what my mother thought. I didn’t really care.

“
You not
only deprived Alice of her life, her only mistake being to love the
child that you and Papa so easily gave away; you also deprived me
of a mother who genuinely loved me. That is a cross I will bear
through no fault of my own.”

Any sad,
repentant expression that followed from my mother, I knew to be
false. She apologized, asked me for forgiveness.

My answer was immediate. “No, I think
not.”

In some
ways, it seemed wrong. I could so easily forgive my Papa. It wasn’t
because of my mother’s malicious manner or her deceitful
explanations. It wasn’t even the fact that she had deserted me at
birth.

It was, I believe, because of the cold
hearted, manipulative execution of Alice.

“What now?” my biological mother said. “Are
you going to the police with this?”

That was the next factor to consider.

“
I
’d love to take that
burden from you,”
Saul answered, when I
appealed to his thoughts.
“But this is purely your decision.”

I liked how he trusted me.

It was a
paradoxical state of affairs, this position I found myself in,
being in the same shoes my father had been in several times, the
future of the family,
our
family lying potently in the
palm of my newly strengthened hands.

Like Papa,
years down the track, I
’d perhaps look
back regrettably at the decision I’d made. As Papa said,
one is always smarter in
hindsight
. But, for now, I believed,
as
Papa
once believed, that I was doing what was
best for the family.

“
What do you
think I should do
?” I asked.

She gritted her teeth; nervous fingers
ploughed her brow. “The truth would devastate our family.”

The truth had already devastated me.

“
Milo,
Nathaniel, Marcus… oh my
god….” Her head
fell into two rickety hands where it remained.

I felt some
momentary pity for her. I doubt she had really considered the
ramifications of her actions, not just for herself, but also for
every other family member. For a glimmer, I could almost feel her
anguish. “That’s why I’m
not
going to the
police.”

My mother’s
eyes shot up.

Because of
Saul,
I could make that decision. He
would guarantee that Alice Polinski was yet another casualty of
Basteros or Carlos Macanetti.

I
wasn
’t stupid. I knew my mother should’ve
been charged, convicted and sent to prison.

But
I had one very important fact to
consider.

No more lies
, my Papa had said.
But that tenet bowed and snapped in the beguiling wind of my
mother. When it came to her, there were no rules. Papa would always
consider his dark days as the trigger of any wrong doing on her
behalf.

And for
that, he would take full responsibility. Even going to prison for
her, convincing the police he had killed Alice Polinski. I knew
this without doubt.

And that I could not allow.

I cast cold
daggers upon the woman
, who by blood, was
my mother. “I can’t be the cause of any more grief for this already
broken family. We have all suffered far too much.”

“And your brothers?”

“
What you
tell them or anyone else in our family is your decision.
Fortunately for you, with Papa still in the hospital, I don’t
believe, at present, it’s in their best interests to
know.”

My
mother
thanked me.

My stomach
lurched. “Whatever you do, do not thank me. This is against any
moral principles I was once proud to say I had.”

I fingered
my wine glass before lifting it to my lips, completely emptying it.
I then stood slinging my bag over my shoulder. “But, I console
myself with two things. One, that like a true Cabriati,
I
’m doing this for our family, our blood.
And two, how Papa looks upon you from this day on, you’ll find hard
to bear. That’ll be Alice’s and my final retribution.”

I then left.

Saul met me
at the hotel’s entrance. He didn’t ask how it went with my mother.
He didn’t need to. No outcome with her would’ve been a pleasant
one.

“
I need to
remember Alice.” I wasn’t looking at Saul but to the blue, still
waters that had previously given me so much comfort. “I need to go
to Araneya.”

“You sure?”

More certain
than anything else I knew. “I want to remember everything, good or
bad.
I want to remember
Alice
.
”

“
It’ll mean
remembering Carlos Macanetti.”

“Fuck Carlos Macanetti.”

But,
in reality, I couldn’t dismiss him. I had to
accept that parts of his confession about Uncle Ricky and I were
correct.

I recalled the blood.

But I recalled
nothing else.

“What are you feeling?” Saul said.

“A whole heap of stuff.”

“
What’s in
your head?”

“
Too much.
It’s like shards of a broken vase,” I whispered. “You find some
pieces immediately, others you discover with a little more effort.
But it’s when you start to look beneath the couches, against the
wall, in places where others wouldn’t bother, that you find the
remaining fragments, the ones that collectively restore the whole
piece and thus give you the answer in its entirety.” I turned to
Saul. “You know what I mean?”

“
The glue,”
he said, “
you’ll need the glue to connect
the fractured pieces of your life.”

“Exactly.”

Saul smiled,
grabbed my hand. “Let’s go find that glue.”

“
Yes,
let’s.”

And we slid
into Saul’s new vehicle and quietly, unobtrusively slipped
away.