Of Blood and Bone (The Minaldi Legacy #1)(50)
Author: Courtney Cole

As he leaves, I walk him to the door, standing silently, willing myself not to break down.

He pauses, touching my cheek for a brief moment.  “Eva, please let me know if you need anything at all.  Luca is not abandoning you.  He just can’t be with you.  It’s for your own good.”

A lump forms in my throat and my eyes fill with tears and I nod.

I know what’s good for me, damn it.  But I don’t say that.  I just nod.  I can’t open my mouth and speak or I will collapse into tears.  Adrian nods and leaves.

And I am alone.

Utterly alone.

I look around the tiny cottage and for the first time, it seems enormous in its solitude.  It seems enormous because anywhere where Luca isn’t seems so very lonely.  I open the back doors to allow fresh air to blow through, then curl up on the couch.  I don’t feel like doing anything else today but wallowing in my own misery.  I decide that I have earned a day of doing exactly that, so I cover up with a blanket and close my eyes.

Chapter Thirty-One

Days pass.

On the fourth day, there is a knock on my door and I open it quickly, hoping to see that Luca has relented.  It isn’t him.

A courier waits on my porch with a slim package in his hands.  I sign for it and take it inside.  After I cut the top open, I find a CD and a note inside, written in Luca’s scrawling handwriting.

Dear Evangeline,

I want you to know that I miss you.  I never expected to meet someone like you, and now that I have and you are gone, your absence is almost too much to bear.  Yet I know it is necessary, as I am certain that you know, as well.  I cannot bear the thought of something happening to you, something by my very own hand.  It would be the death of me.  I know that much is true.

I have recorded a few things for you on this CD to help you sleep.  It makes me happy to envision you safe in your bed listening to my music.  When I play now, it will always be for you.

I will always picture you happy and safe, Evangeline.  Please endeavor to remain that way.

All my love,

Luca

My eyes are burning and hot and I close them, feeling the warm wetness slide down my cheeks and onto the linen stationery in my hands.  I shakily put the CD into a player and the sounds of Luca’s hands, the music that he makes with them, fills my house.  It is haunting and beautiful, just like the man who is created it.

I spend hours listening to it, surrounded by memories of him.  The fourth day is a sad day.

More days pass.  They are empty and difficult and I find that I am numb, that I simply move through the motions of life without feeling them.  I know now why I created the barrier around my heart so long ago.  It hurts so very much when something breaks it down and I feel something.

I cannot bring myself to leave Malta, not yet.  Even though I have finished my dissertation.  I don’t feel anything at all as I push the ‘send’ button and email it to my mentor, the head of the Psychiatry program.  I know I will have to return to the states to defend it at some point, but I don’t think of that now.

I also fill my days trying to find answers for Luca. There have been no more killings in Valletta, so I have to assume that he has been secluded in the cave, which makes me want to weep.  I throw myself into trying to help him, even though it must be from afar.

There are so many things that his affliction could be, so many things that it could be part of.  Mental illness is fluid, it can bend and morph until one disorder can actually be components of several others.  Without having Luca in front of me, it is hard to diagnose him with anything.  I still refer to his problem as the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde disorder.

I finally hear back from my mentor concerning it and he doesn’t have much insight on the subject as he’s never seen such a thing before.  Although he is fascinated as well and cannot wait to read my research, which is not really any help at all.  He suggests, as I already suspected, that the disorder is something comprised of components of several other disorders.  I begin researching them yet again, trying to patch together what it might be.

I eat with Marianne several times, although I am not hungry.  I feel pathetic, like a lovesick schoolgirl who cannot come to terms with a breakup.  But this thing that Luca and I had was so much more than a relationship.  I can’t even define it, yet I grieve the loss of it.

Marianne force feeds me.  She comes to my cottage and demands that I eat, bringing with her pasta and wine and bread.  She sits with me sometimes, having coffee on my patio and chatting with me, filling the silence.  She is a good friend.

It is she who makes the deduction that I am pregnant.

I had been nauseas and emotional for a week or two and I attributed it to stress and nerves, which is completely plausible in this situation.  But as I struggle to eat pasta without vomiting, Marianne looks at me in concern.

“When was your last period?” she asks me gently.

Her words stun me.

“I don’t know,” I stutter. And I feel foolish because I am a physician and I didn’t see this.  My hand automatically grazes my flat belly, shielding whatever might be inside.  I feel something for the first time in weeks besides grief and sadness.

Wonderment.

“It’s not possible,” I say without conviction.

Because I know that it is.

That first night, the night that Luca came into my room when he wasn’t himself, I wasn’t on birth control and he didn’t use anything either.  He wasn’t himself.  He didn’t even think to use it.   I went into town shortly after that and filled a prescription, but that first and second time, we didn’t use anything at all.

Two times.

My hand rests against my belly, against what might be my unborn child.  And Luca’s.  That realization brings with it so many thoughts.  Happiness, although it is bittersweet.  I am strangely happy that I might have a piece of Luca.  Which brings with it the darker thoughts, the realization that the child within me might inherit the dark affliction that is born in the Minaldi men.   

I don’t focus on that, however.  I can’t.  I will deal with that when the time comes because that is all that I can do.  In the meantime, I revel in the idea that I will bear Luca’s child.  It is a sense of wonder, a sense of awe.

Marianne becomes a mother hen and her sense of protection where I am concerned kicks in to overdrive.  She comes over almost every day, bringing with her fresh food and conversation, making sure that I am okay.  Every day, I am.  Every day, she tells me that I must tell Luca.  Every day, I balk.  I know what his answer will be.  He will want me to terminate the pregnancy.  He won’t want to risk having the affliction pass to yet another person.