She supposedly knew nothing more about Emily Carlino than what he had told her: that she greatly resembled Emily, that he and Emily had once been lovers but that she had “left” him. Yet Maddison knew of the grave meant for Emily—even though the headstone lacked that precious name—and knew of Calista. She sounded like Emily, moved like Emily, cooked like Emily, made love like Emily . . .
With such a cloud of mysteries weighing down on the evening like thunderheads swollen with cold rain and armed with ten thousand lightning bolts, the conversation should have stumbled repeatedly as they avoided tripping over the countless deceptions and evasions in which they had engaged since the night they met. Instead, she was a charming, funny, intelligent companion, and David held his own with her, and the conversation flowed as ever it had between him and Emily, until at ten o’clock they had been three hours at the table.
He suggested that they clean up the kitchen together, but she said, “I’ll do it in the morning. I’ve moved out of the hotel and brought all my luggage here to stay awhile. Why don’t you provide the second dessert and take me to bed?”
Although he wanted nothing more than to do what she asked, the weirdness of the situation so troubled him that he thought they had best avoid intimacy until all secrets were revealed, according to her promise. He couldn’t say as much without in the end disclosing where he’d spent the day, and he was worried that if Maddison knew of his investigation, if she viewed it as distrust of her, the floor might fall out from under their relationship.
He said, “You shouldn’t have stuffed me like a fat Italian sausage. I’ll be a whale in bed.”
“Nonsense. It was a light meal, and you’ll be what you were last night, which is everything a girl could ask.”
“But it’s been a long, warm, sticky day. I’m a poster boy for the tragedy of body odor.”
She plucked her napkin off her lap and set it aside and got up from her chair and rounded the table and sat on his lap. “That’s easily fixed. We’ll take a shower together, soap each other up, and go to bed as fresh as ever we were.” She held his face between her hands and kissed him. “Let’s not waste an evening, Davey. Let’s never say ‘tomorrow,’ because all we ever have is the moment. People think there’s a future, but there really isn’t, not if we want to be totally honest with ourselves. There’s the past, which we might wish desperately that we can change, and there’s now. If we don’t seize the now with all our might, it becomes just another part of the past that we end up wishing we could change.”
She kissed him again and led him to the shower. He convinced himself there was no reason to resist; this was the only way things could be; this was good and true, as much an expression of trust and hope as it was a surrender to need. If she was right and this moment was all they really had, then it was precious beyond valuing. But if what he wished for might come to pass, if all of the mysteries would clarify and the suspicions prove unwarranted, if they could have a few decades together, then this was a commitment to their future.
No less than in Montecito, earlier in the day, on a profound level deeper than the subconscious, deeper than mere intuition or instinct, David knew that she was somehow Emily. His soul recognized hers, and doubt had no place in matters spiritual.
In the act, when they were one, when the fresh scent of her was all that he could smell, when the sight of her was the only reality that his eyes would admit, when there was no sound in all the world but her quickening breath and small cries of rapture, when his senses were saturated with her, he said three times aloud what he had not previously been able to say to Maddison—“I love you”—and in so saying, spoke the truth of his heart.
He had told Emily that he loved her and had meant it no less than he meant it now. But he had been immature then and too callow to grasp how the world would test his vows. He hadn’t understood that the ignorance and inexperience of youth provided fertile ground for self-delusion and vanity, which could lead him to betray his best intentions. These years later, he knew the heart was deceitful above all things and required constant self-judgment; all hope and happiness depended on never lying to himself and at all costs being faithful to the vows he made.
With “I love you,” he was pledged to this woman beyond reason, no longer primarily driven to find the truth of her, but to prove that the truth of her was benign. Intuition, that primary form of knowledge, coming before all learning and reasoning, told him she was fundamentally good, innocent, and a victim of someone, not a victimizer. His investigation of her would now be an investigation on her behalf, an unstinting effort to vindicate her, to free her from those to whom she might in some way be indentured.