‘And he loved you,’ I said, remembering my conversation with Luca about the stars, about possibility, about all the things she made him believe he could be.
And he’ll never know, I realized. He’ll never know you made it out alive.
A rogue tear slid down my face.
Evelina rubbed my arm, her fingers grazing my bullet wound. ‘It’s OK,’ she soothed. ‘I once lived in that world. It is a cruel, unforgiving place, where good men suffer and bad men thrive. It is filled with loss and regret, and guilt. I understand what you’ve been through.’ She waited until I raised my gaze again. ‘It’s been hard for you. For both of us. But you are all the better for being here right now, with us. Will you stay?
For a while?’
Emilia was laughing at something in the other room. It was such a beautiful, foreign sound. I found myself nodding. ‘Yes.’
‘A new year starts tomorrow,’ she said gently. ‘A new beginning.’
But first there was tonight. And I couldn’t get tonight out of my head.
CHAPTER FIFTY
MIDNIGHT
I was sitting beside Evelina Falcone with a half-drunk glass of red wine in my hand, watching the New Year’s Eve countdown on a local news station, when the massacre began back in Chicago.
The screen changed, and footage of fireworks in Colorado was replaced by a BREAKING NEWS bulletin. Bile gathered in my throat as the words flashed across the screen: ‘DISTURBANCE AT CHICAGO MAYOR’S YACHT PARTY’. The cameras were zooming in on a huge white yacht on Lake Michigan, and several police boats were already racing towards it. The scene shifted, and a reporter flashed on-screen, the yacht behind her right shoulder, horror etched across her face.
Evelina and I fell into silence, and I tried my hardest not to rip the skin from the backs of my fingers as I stared, barely blinking, at the final scene of my worst nightmare.
‘MASS SHOOTING ABOARD MAYOR’S YACHT PARTY’ scrolled across the screen.
Evelina covered her mouth with her hands, her scream trapped inside her. I was gripping the seat so hard, my fingernails were ripping into the leather. I stayed like that, glued, as the headlines changed, and slowly, slowly, the death toll mounted. All of them nameless.
I was still staring at the screen when Evelina got to her feet aeons later.
‘Sophie,’ she said, a hand laid on my shoulder. I barely felt it. ‘I think we should call it a night.’
‘Seven,’ I said, my mouth so dry the words croaked out of it. ‘And bodies in the water, too, they think.’
‘Sophie,’ she said.
‘And injured. Lots of injured.’
‘Sophie,’ she said again. ‘Look at me.’
I tore my eyes away from the screen, stared up at her. She was wearing a long pink robe – she had pulled all the threads from the ends, and now they were frayed around her fingers. ‘This is part of your new life, Sophie. Learning to walk away. You can’t look back. We can’t look back. No matter how much we want to.’
Her mouth was moving but all I could hear was the word ‘seven’. Seven. Seven dead already. Seven was a big number. Too big. One was too big.
‘I have to know.’ I lurched forward, willing the screen to change. There were no names released, just faraway images of body bags and police in riot gear rushing to and fro. Ambulances on standby. Sirens blaring. ‘I have to know how many of them are … I need to know who …’
Evelina stood in front of the TV, head tilted to one side as she looked down on me. ‘No, you don’t. Not now. Not tonight.’
Something was heaving inside me, clawing against my insides. ‘He could be dead,’ I told her, my pitch rising. ‘Or in the water, and if he’s one of the bodies in the water then he won’t survive because it’s almost below freezing over there right now and—’
‘Sophie.’ Evelina hunkered down until we were at eye level. Over her shoulder, a helicopter panned over the scene of the shooting – the distant sounds of screams filling up the background. Seven. That was all of them. All the ones I cared about. Luca, Nic, Dom, Gino, Paulie, Elena, CJ.
‘There won’t be much more news tonight, Sophie. A good night’s sleep will do you a world of good. Tomorrow is a brand new day.’ I knew she wasn’t trying to sound like a song from a Disney musical.
Evelina’s hand on mine – warm, firm. ‘Do you understand that this is part of your journey? Part of your recovery? We need to turn off the television, and you need to turn off your mind, and get some sleep. You need to start looking forward, to the future. You need to start concentrating on yourself again.’
‘I – I need to know.’
‘It won’t change anything now.’
And that was the awful truth. It didn’t matter. Because I was here and he was there. We had made our choices. We had said our goodbyes.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said, quietly. ‘There’ll be nothing tonight.
You can’t be in this with them. You can’t do anything. You’re out.’
I was a statue, barely breathing. ‘I’m out.’
‘You’re out.’
She shut the TV off – all the disturbing images and squealing sirens disappearing in one sudden blink. ‘You’re out,’ she said, standing up again. ‘You’re out now.’
‘I’m out,’ I repeated, hoping to harness some kind of relief. There was nothing, just horror and grief, and fear.