R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

Later he returned. It was dark. I had settled somewhat, had come to terms with some aspect of what I had discovered. I imagined that we could both survive this, that as time went by life would somehow become what it was in the present, and cease to be what it had been in the past.

I could not have been more wrong. I could not have been more wrong if I’d tried.

I did not speak to Victor of his phone call with Emilie. I did not question him as to what he knew, what he thought he knew, but I could not deny the fact that it was there, ever-present in the back of my mind. It was as if there was some closed box, and inside the box was all I had been, all I feared for what might happen, and only when I was alone, only when Victor was out, did I dare open that box and look inside. For the subsequent months, through his nineteenth birthday, beyond fall and towards Christmas, I wore a face for the world that was only half of my own. The man I had been was there, would always be there, but I did not let him loose. I could not dare to let him loose for fear of what might happen.

Emilie came down again after Thanksgiving. She and Victor spent a great deal of time away from the house, and only once was I aware of the fact that something more than teenage love occupied their thoughts and feelings. It was one evening, perhaps eight or nine, and she and Victor were downstairs in the kitchen. I had been upstairs reading and I came out of my room and started down the stairs as I was hungry. I stopped in the lower hall and could hear their voices. Perhaps it was innocent curiosity regarding what they might discuss when I was not present, perhaps a concern that once again Victor was detailing memories from his own past that involved me; whatever the cause I stopped there and waited to hear what they were saying.

‘David has his own thing going on,’ Emilie was saying. ‘He has someone down here, some woman that he sees, I am sure, and so he doesn’t really have a chance to complain about what I do.’

‘He has to call your father though?’

‘Sure he does, but what happens and what he tells him are not necessarily the same thing. He tells my dad what my dad wants to hear, and that’s the end of it. Me and David have an understanding. He knows I can take care of myself and he doesn’t want anything to upset his own plans. That’s why he’s always so willing to bring me down here.’

‘And what about your mom?’

‘Sometimes we tell her we’re coming, like for a few days or something, and we stay maybe two weeks. I see enough of her. I mean for Christ’s sake, all she does is spend her time telling me what an asshole my dad is, and there’s only so much of that I can take. I come down here for a break from all that crap.’ Emilie laughed. ‘So David says we’re with my mom and whatever, and my dad is happy with that because I’m not around the place bugging him while he’s trying to work, and as far as my mom is concerned, as long as she sees me a few days of the year she doesn’t complain. She’s too busy arranging other people’s lives to worry about what I might be up to.’

‘And your dad doesn’t know about me?’ Victor asked.

There was silence; I could only assume that Emilie was shaking her head.

‘How come you haven’t told him?’

‘Because he’d be all over you like a freakin’ rash, Victor. He’d have you investigated. He’d find out about your father. Before the week was out he’d know everything there was to know about you and that would be the end of my trips to New Orleans.’

It was quiet for a few moments, and then Victor said, ‘We could take off somewhere. I know where my dad keeps his money… I mean, it’s not like he puts the stuff in the bank or something. We could take some money and just disappear, vanish into the middle of America and no-one would find us.’

‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with,’ Emilie said. ‘My dad’s like this super-rich guy with all manner of contacts and your dad’s a fucking Mafia hitman… you think between them they wouldn’t have the wherewithal to find us if they wanted?’

Victor didn’t reply.

‘Victor, you gotta face the facts. My dad knew what I was doing down here he would have a coronary fucking seizure. I’m his sweet little teenage daughter, good grades, plays tennis, goes shopping in the mall with Daddy’s charge card… he knew I was down here in New Orleans screwing a Mafia hitman’s son he’d have me cut off from the family and put in a mental institution. We just got to accept the fact that it’s gonna be this way whether we like it or not. We just deal with it. We see each other as often as we can, and when things change we can do what we wanna do.’

‘Things change? Whaddya mean, when things change?’

‘Like when my dad dies or whatever.’

‘Dies? How the hell is he gonna die? You gonna kill him or something?’

Emilie laughed. ‘Hell, maybe I could steal some money off my dad and pay your dad to whack him!’

‘No, Em, I’m serious. You’re saying that to do what we want to do, to have people know about us, then we’re gonna have to wait until your dad dies? For God’s sake, that could be years and years.’

Emilie sighed. ‘That’s just the way it is… it’s fucking Shakespeare, isn’t it? The Montagues and the Capulets… the two families that could never be together. Romeo and freakin’ Juliet, you know?’

I stepped away from the door and made my way back to the base of the stairwell. My heart was cold and quiet, like a stone in my chest. Sweat had broken out on the palms of my hands, and there was a deep pain throbbing in my head, stealing all my energy and my ability to think clearly.

My son and his girlfriend, nothing more than teenagers, had become the murderous star-crossed lovers. I did not believe for a moment that either of them had seriously contemplated any aspect of what they were discussing, but that was not the point. The fact was that they were talking about it, and thus such thoughts must have been in their minds. Emilie was a strong-willed girl, fiercely independent, and Victor was in love. There was no doubting that fact, and I knew how swayed he could be by someone such as her. She was, in her own way, quietly dangerous, and for the first time in my life I feared for him. Not as a result of something I had done or some element of my own past perhaps coming back to find us, but because of something he had done. He had known this girl a matter of two and a half years, they had seen each other perhaps a dozen or so times, but their separations seemed to have made them anxious to be together even more. I believed, certainly in the case of Victor and Emilie, that it was the fact that they could not be together all the time that made them want each other so much.

I went back upstairs. I sat on the edge of my bed. I asked myself what I was going to do, what I could do, and after some minutes I realized that I had no idea at all.

Emilie stayed until a week before Christmas, and then she returned to her father’s home. She promised she would come back again for the Mardi Gras in April, and Victor made her swear that she would. They stood together in the front hallway for a small eternity, and Emilie shed some tears, and I believe Victor did also. It was as if I was watching two people being torn apart by nothing more than cruel circumstance and I asked myself why it always had to be so hard. Did we ultimately pay for what we had done? And, by default, by the mere fact that we were connected to those who had done wrong, did we pay for the sins of our fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters? In that moment I believed I would have killed Emilie’s father. Without thought, without mercy, without compunction, I would have followed her to her house, waited silently until she left once again, and then stepped inside to murder him. He would be removed from the equation, and Emilie would have been free to choose what she wished to do. Perhaps Victor would go with her somewhere, out into the middle of America to lose themselves. Or perhaps she would have come here, and they could have spent the few years I would be alive living beneath this roof, aware of the fact that no-one – but no-one – would stand in the way of their happiness.