R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

It was a crazy thought, a thought that belonged to the past, but the fact that I had even considered such a thing haunted me.

Victor let Emilie go, as did I, and we survived Christmas together. Once it had been enough that Victor was with me, but now I was so aware of how unhappy he was without her. It did not seem right. It was an injustice. I vowed that if there was anything I could do to redress the balance I would do it.

When Emilie returned in the latter part of March something had changed. There had been some difficulty between her parents, something that had rubbed off on Emilie, and for the first few days she seemed tense and quiet.

It was only at the start of the second week that both Victor and I understood what had happened, and how it was far closer to home than either of us had imagined.

‘He doesn’t want me to come down any more,’ she said. We were seated at the dining table, eating dinner together as we had so often done before, and it was merely as a result of a comment that I had made that she finally broke down and told us the truth.

‘I have thought about the summer,’ I said. ‘That we should perhaps arrange with your mother and father that you go somewhere other than New Orleans, perhaps a holiday in California?’

Emilie was silent; didn’t say a word.

‘Emilie? What do you think?’

‘I think it’s a great idea,’ Victor interjected. ‘We could go out to California and see Los Angeles.’ He turned and looked at Emilie. She had stopped eating. Her expression was distant and disconnected.

‘Em?’

It was then that she said it: He doesn’t want me to come down any more .

There was silence for the better part of a minute, and then Victor said, ‘Who doesn’t? Your father?’

She nodded. ‘My father.’

I leaned forward. I felt concern and anxiety. ‘What did he say to you? Why doesn’t he want you to come here any more?’

She shook her head slowly and looked towards the window. ‘He said that I spend too much time away from home, that I am coming to the end of my studies and I should be working more and taking less vacation time. He said that he had spoken to my mother and they both agreed that it was time for me to grow up.’ She smiled bitterly. There were tears in her eyes. ‘I hardly see them, and yet they feel they have the right to tell me what I can do with my life.’

‘They are your parents, Emilie,’ I said, and even as the words left my mouth I knew I did not agree with nor condone what they had told her.

‘Sure, they’re my parents,’ she replied. ‘But that doesn’t make me any less angry with them. What the hell do they know? What right do they have to tell me what I can and can’t do? I’m nearly nineteen for Christ’s sake! I’m an adult. I’m doing fine at school. I’ll get the qualifications they want me to get, qualifications I never even wanted in the first place and only did because they insisted. I’ve done everything they wanted me to do the whole of my life, and just because they made mistakes doesn’t mean they can force their opinions on me and make me do what they want me to do.’ She grabbed her serviette from her lap, bundled it up and threw it down on the table.

I looked at Victor. He was stunned into silence. I wanted to say something, anything that would make it alright, turn everything backwards and give us all a chance to start over again, but there was nothing. My head and my mouth were empty.

‘He said that this was to be the last time I could come down here until I finished school.’ Emilie said, and then once again she turned towards the window and fell silent.

‘It will be alright,’ I said, believing at once that it would not. I wished in some way that she had said nothing. I wished she had perhaps left this until she was ready to leave. Then, at least, the time that we would spend together now would not be overshadowed by this revelation.

‘He can’t do that,’ Victor said, and in his eyes was the certainty that Emilie’s father could do whatever he wished. He was a man of wealth and means, he could employ people to find her, he could have her grounded indefinitely, have her escorted to school and back again, and though in the process he might lose any remnant of love that his daughter might feel for him, the fact was that he could do whatever he wished and there was nothing Victor or I could do to change that. Emilie’s father was in control. She was a part of our life, but she was not under our control.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said, and she turned back to me. She reached out and took Victor’s hand. ‘I would ask you to come with me, but your life is here. You have to finish your own studies, and I know that my father would not approve of you.’

She glanced at me nervously, and then she smiled as if making some attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

I knew it was coming. I knew what she would say, and in my heart I felt the rushing wave of horror at where we would go from here.

‘I know my father would find out everything about you,’ she said. She looked at me. Her eyes were cool and emotionless. ‘I cannot make a judgement, but I know the truth, Ernesto. Victor has told me-’

‘Emilie!’ Victor snapped, but she turned and raised her hand and stopped him dead in his tracks.

‘I am going to say what I’m going to say,’ she interjected, and once again there was that steely fire of determination in her eyes. Here was the fiercely individual Emilie Devereau; here was the strength of character that at once made her so attractive, and yet again made her someone you could not fool or deceive. ‘I am going to say what I’m going to say, and whether it’s the truth or not doesn’t matter.’ She looked at me once again. ‘You could be the richest man in Louisiana,’ she said. ‘You could own a hundred thousand businesses and donate millions of dollars to charity. You could have a spotless personal reputation and the best public relations people in the world, but still my father would not approve of my being with Victor.’

I frowned. I did not understand where she was going.

She smiled. ‘But we all know that you don’t run a business, and you are not the richest man in Louisiana, don’t we? We know that there have been things that have happened in the past that none of us want to know the details of. We know that your wife and your daughter weren’t killed in a car crash. I’m not going to pretend I know everything, and I’m sure there’s a great deal more that Victor knows that he hasn’t told me, but all of that is irrelevant. The truth of the matter is that my father is a bigot and a racist and a stupid and ignorant man. The simple fact that you are not American is enough. The fact that you are Cuban would be enough to convince him to never let me see Victor again. Like I said one time before, it all comes back to Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet, the Montagues and the Capulets. We are destined never to be together if my father has anything to do with it.’

Emilie turned and looked at Victor. ‘There have been things I haven’t been able to tell you. There are things that I won’t even tell you now. I love you. I want to be with you. But there is something here that is bigger than all of us combined and there is nothing I can do about it.’

Victor was pale and drawn. His mouth was half-open as if he was trying to think of something to say but nothing was forthcoming.

Emilie raised her hand and touched Victor’s face. ‘I didn’t want to talk about this. I wanted to wait until I had to leave, but I cannot bear the thought of carrying this alone any longer. My father has forbidden me to come down here again and there seems to be nothing I can do about it.’

Victor looked at me. He was waiting for me to say something, to make this terrible thing go away, but there was nothing I could do.