She’s quiet for the rest of the day, throughout lunch and the flight back to Palermo. It’s late afternoon when we’re back and as soon as we walk inside, Gabriela heads for the stairs.
“Gabriela.”
She stops, turns to me.
There’s so much sadness in her eyes right now that it’s hard to look at her. To see her like this. Alex’s death pushed her over the edge, but this has been building for a long time. Maybe all her life.
It’s everything that’s already happened to her.
All the things that are still happening. That have yet to happen.
“Go change into something comfortable. I want to take you somewhere.” As I say it, I’m not sure why I’m going to do it. I’ve been to Skull Rock once since Antonio betrayed us. It was the night I buried what was left of him.
She opens her mouth to protest. I can already hear it before she even says a word.
I go to her, put my finger to her lips. “You said you’d do anything if I let you see your brother.”
“You’re going to take me to see Gabe?” she seems surprised and when she smiles, her eyes sparkle for the first time in days.
I smile too. “Not right this second, but yes. First, change. And bring a sweater. Hurry.”
“Okay.”
She disappears up the stairs and I follow her to do the same, putting on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. It’s a few minutes after I’m downstairs that she follows wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top and is tying a sweater around her hips.
I hold out my hand.
She looks at it cautiously, but slips hers inside mine and a few minutes later, I’m leading her out the back of the house and down those stone steps to the cove.
“Where are we going?” she asks as I help her down. The stairs are steep, and I wonder how she managed them in the dark that night without falling.
“Have you ever gone swimming in the sea under the moon?” I ask her as we step onto the sandy beach.
She pulls back, her expression changing.
“Stefan, I can’t swim. You know that.”
“You can swim. You’re just afraid to and I already told you I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” This is one reason I didn’t tell her to put a swimsuit on. She’d have given me trouble.
She’s reluctant as I guide her around a corner, following the shoreline to a hidden cove I’m sure she hasn’t discovered yet.
“I used to play here with my brother growing up,” I say as we turn a final corner where my boat is docked. “Now the toys are a little different.” It’s a sailboat, not a very big one, just what I need. I haven’t taken it out in a while.
Gabriela looks up at it, at the high sails, the beautiful polished wood.
“It belonged to my father. I inherited it.” It’s well maintained, even through the years I wasn’t able to do it myself.
She turns to me. “You can sail?”
I nod. “Have you ever been sailing?”
“A long time ago. With my mom and brother.”
“Well,” I start gesturing to the boat. “Then you can help.”
It takes a little doing to convince her to get on and I don’t really expect her to help with the sails but not ten minutes later, we’re out on the water having caught the wind and are sailing steadily toward what Antonio and I named Skull Rock. It feels like a lifetime ago that we did that. It is a lifetime. A whole other life.
I sit beside Gabriela as we watch the sun set on the horizon and she slips her sweater on, pulling the sleeves over her hands as the breeze cools a little and when I shift closer and put an arm around her, she doesn’t pull away.
“I’m not sure what’s more beautiful,” she starts. “The sunsets or the sunrises.”
“Maybe it depends on the day. If you need a beginning or an ending.”
The moon replaces the sun in the sky. It’s full and the night is clear.
I work the sails and navigate the boat to Skull Rock and a little while later, I lift her out of the boat. We walk onto the shore where we sit on the sand and look back at the house, at Palermo in the distance, and the moonlit water. The only sound is that of the water lapping against the boat, waves gently rolling onto the beach.
“What is this place?” she asks.
“Skull Rock. At least that’s what my brother and I named it. Look,” I lean close to her, point. “Close your right eye and look at the rock. Tell me it doesn’t look like a human skull.”
“That’s creepy.”
“Yep. Exactly what we liked when we were little.”
“I saw a picture of you when you were little. You were cute. And fat.”
I can hear a smile in her voice. I smile too. “I never passed up a plate of my mom’s homemade pasta,” I say with a wink.
Her smile fades a moment later and she lies down on her back to look up at the sky.
I watch her. She’s so fucking beautiful. Even like this, sad and pale, she’s still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“Do you miss her?” she asks.
“I miss them all.”
She glances at me but shifts her gaze back to the sky. “Do you believe in Heaven and Hell, Stefan?”
I lie down too, hands behind my head, and think about her question. Think how to answer her.
“Yes and no.”
She turns her head to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“I believe in hell. I believe that’s where we’re left when they die.”
“That’s so sad.” Her eyes glisten with tears and one slides over her temple.
I wipe it away. “You cry too much.”
“Please don’t call me a baby and ruin this.”
She must see confusion on my face.
“You’re being nice, Stefan. Don’t mess it up.”
“I wasn’t going to call you a baby.” I turn on my side, set my elbow on the sand and lean my head in my hand. “What do you believe?”
She shifts her gaze up. “I think those stars are us. When we die. I think they’re our souls. And I think you’re right about hell being right here.”
Her voice breaks on more tears. A torrent of them.
“Gabi,” I say, not sure why I use that abbreviated version of her name.
She tries to pull away, but I don’t let her. Instead, I turn her to face me and I lean down to kiss one of those tears. I taste the salt of them and when I’ve kissed them all away, I set my forearms on either side of her face. She looks up at me, her hands on my shoulders.
“Everyone I love is dead. Everyone but Gabe. And he’s…he’s not…”
“Shh.” I lift her to me, hug her, holding her tight as she dissolves into tears. If I let her go, I wonder if she’ll disappear. Melt into her pain. “You may be broken, but you’re not alone. You don’t have to be, at least.”
She turns her head away, shakes it, pushes at me to get up.
“Don’t push me away,” I say, not letting her go.
“One heroic act does not a hero make,” she says, repeating my words from earlier.
We just stay like that for a long minute. Then, without asking, I begin to undress her. I didn’t bring her out here to watch her cry. I brought her to stop the tears.
When she resists, I tell her to be quiet. I leave her bra and panties on and stand to strip off my clothes. I then lift her up and carry her into the water.
“Stefan, no!” She clings to me and struggles against me at once.
“Yes.” I hold tight to her and she gasps as I walk in deeper. “I won’t let you go. I promise.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“I’m scared.”
I stop when the water comes up to my chest and she’s partly in it. The sea is cool and calm. “Do you trust me?”
She looks up at me and I know I’ve given her no reason to trust me. The opposite.
“Do you want to trust me?” I rephrase.
She nods and I get the feeling she’s desperate to.
I take another step. “Watch the sky, Gabriela, and know that I won’t let you go,” I tell her as I swim out and she slowly relaxes, loosening her death grip, and, finally, floats.
We stay out there for a long while, neither of us breathing a word and something shifts between us. It swells as I float alongside her, holding her hand, never letting her go. We’re weightless out here, both of us weightless, at least for a while.