Chapter 11: The Fire at the Lake

I read his mother's note on the terrace, alone, with the ocean going grey under a low sky.

It was three lines in a careful, slanting hand.

The summer you were eight, the boathouse on the lake caught fire with you asleep inside it.

My son carried you out through the smoke and went back for the dog.

The doctors said he would never breathe right again, and when he was nineteen he began telling his enemies he was dying.

I read it twice.

I did not remember the fire.

I remembered a smell of burning, a man's voice and the taste of ash.

I remembered waking on the grass with my face wet and an eleven-year-old boy lying beside me, coughing, and a spaniel licking my hands.

In my first life, I had told that memory to nobody.

I folded the note and went in.

He was in the study with the door open, standing at the window with his back to me.

He did not turn around.

"You read it."

"Yes."

"I didn't want you to know like that."

"You didn't want me to know at all."

"I wanted you to find out who I was before you found out what I'd done." He turned. "Is that so strange?"

"You let me marry you thinking you'd be dead in a year."

"You married me to beat your sister."

"You let me stand beside you at that table and watch you cough."

"It wasn't a lie."

"Luca."

"It was a plan." His voice was rough. "The lungs are scarred, Gemma. The cough is real.

"I just don't have it when I'm alone.

"Every man in that room wanted me dead or sold. The only reason they waited was that they thought I'd die on my own."

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