Chapter 3 - The Man I Paid To Follow My Wife
I was thirty-eight when I hired the investigator.
Old enough to know better.
Young enough to believe certainty excused almost anything.
Elena had started disappearing twice a week.
Tuesday afternoons.
Thursday mornings.
Sometimes longer.
She said she was helping a friend.
Wouldn't say which friend.
I asked.
She refused.
I asked again.
She told me it wasn't my secret.
That sentence drove me insane.
Camilla sat across from me now, twenty-three years later.
“You thought Mom was cheating?”
“I considered it.”
“Did you believe it?”
“I believed she was hiding something.”
“That wasn't my question.”
I looked at her.
“Yes.”
Her face tightened.
I continued.
“I had somebody follow her.”
“For how long?”
“Three weeks.”
“Did Mom know?”
“Not at first.”
“What did he find?”
“Elena meeting Lydia.”
Camilla frowned.
“Marco's mother.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Parking lots. A bank. An attorney's office.”
Camilla stared.
“And you still thought affair?”
“No.”
That was when the story should have ended.
It didn't.
I had information now.
Information creates its own appetite in people like me.
“Anthony called one night.”
“Marco's dad?”
“Yes.”
“He said Lydia was missing.”
“Missing?”
“She hadn't come home.”
“Did he know Mom was helping her?”
“He suspected.”
“And you knew where they had gone.”
I looked at the mantel.
“Elena had driven Lydia to Harbor House.”
Camilla's eyes narrowed.
“Why a motel?”
“I didn't know.”
“You could have asked Mom.”
“I had.”
“And she said it wasn't your secret.”
“Yes.”
Camilla leaned back.
“So you told Anthony.”
I didn't answer quickly enough.
Her face changed.
“You did.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He said Marco was crying.”
Camilla closed her eyes.
Marco had been eleven.
“He said Lydia wasn't answering.”
“And?”
“I thought a husband had a right to know where his wife was.”
The sentence sounded worse now than it had inside my head for two decades.
Camilla stared at me.
“Even when your wife told you not to tell him?”
I stopped.
That was the piece I had not yet said.
Elena had found the investigator's report in my desk.
She knew I knew.
She made me promise not to tell Anthony where Lydia was.
I promised to stay out of it.
Then Anthony called.
He said Lydia had taken cash.
Said she wasn't herself.
Said Marco had a fever.
Said she was being manipulated.
I gave him the motel.
“Mom asked you not to.”
“Yes.”
“And you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
Camilla stood.
She walked toward the windows.
I let her.
After a minute:
“What happened?”
“Anthony drove there.”
“Did he bring Marco?”
“No.”
“Did Lydia come home?”
“Not that night.”
Camilla turned.
“What?”
“Anthony told me she did.”
“But?”
“Later I found out she didn't.”
“Where did she go?”
“Elena moved her.”
Camilla stared.
“To where?”
“I didn't know.”
“You followed Mom again?”
“No.”
That time, I stopped.
Not because I had become good overnight.
Because Elena discovered what I'd done.
“She came home at two in the morning,” I said.
“Mom?”
“Yes.”
“She packed a bag for you. One for herself. Woke you up.”
Camilla's mouth opened slightly.
“I remember a car.”
“You probably do.”
“Rain.”
“It was raining.”
“A yellow blanket.”
I looked at her.
“You refused to sleep without it.”
Her face changed.
Memory arriving without permission.
“Did she tell you where she was taking me?”
“No.”
“Did you stop her?”
I almost lied.
Not outright.
The soft lie.
The one where you describe intent instead of action.
“I stood in front of the door.”
Camilla stared.
“For how long?”
“Maybe thirty seconds.”
“What did Mom do?”
“She told me to move.”
“And?”
“I moved.”
“Why?”
I remembered Elena holding six-year-old Camilla against her hip.
My daughter's face buried against her neck.
Elena looking at me as if she had never seen me before.
“Because she said if I made her ask twice, she wasn't coming back.”
Camilla sat again.
“Did you believe her?”
“Yes.”
“Then why have you never told me?”
I looked at her.
“Because she did come back.”
“That doesn't answer it.”
No.
It didn't.
I had turned the ending into permission to simplify the middle.
“She stayed away nineteen days.”
“At Harbor House?”
“Only the first night.”
“Where after?”
“I never asked.”
Camilla laughed bitterly.
“You definitely asked.”
I almost smiled.
She knew me.
“I asked Elena. She wouldn't tell me.”
“And you accepted that?”
“Eventually.”
“Who was Lydia hiding from?”
I did not answer.
Camilla's voice hardened.
“Dad.”
“Anthony.”
She stared.
“Was he hurting her?”
“I never saw him hit her.”
“That isn't what I asked.”
“I don't know.”
That was the truth.
And also an indictment.
Because Elena had known enough to help Lydia disappear.
I had decided I needed a standard of proof before I respected her fear.
Camilla looked toward the front door Marco had used an hour earlier.
“What did Anthony say when you gave him the motel?”
I remembered perfectly.
He had clasped my shoulder outside the club two days later.
Smiled.
Called me brother.
Said:
“You saved my family.”
I told Camilla.
Her face went cold.
Then she asked:
“And Mom?”
“What about her?”
“Did she think you saved it?”
I looked toward Elena's envelope.
“No.”
Camilla waited.
“What did she call it?”
I heard my wife's voice as clearly as if she were standing behind me.
“You didn't save Lydia's marriage, Domenico. You helped Anthony find a woman who had asked not to be found.”
Camilla closed her eyes.
Then whispered:
“Marco's father thanked you.”
“Yes.”
“And Marco grew up thinking his mother came home because she wanted to.”
May you like
I looked at my daughter.
“That is what Anthony told all of us.”
