Did He Know?

I hated it when Lucca didn’t want to talk to me. Every damned July he did this shit to me. But I couldn’t blame him. His baby brother was dead. Today, Daniel would have been twenty-eight or twenty-nine, I think. Hell, it had been so long ago that I often forgot about him. Well, I tried to forget about him, but his electric blue eyes never left mine. I tried to forget his thrashing panic as he gawked at me while water filled his lungs, but that’s all I could see. He should have at least kissed me before he died. He owed me that.

I watched my husband pace the wooden floor. He held Daniel’s picture in his hand, trying not to cry. Had Lucca known what we did, I knew that he would have killed me—maybe the same way that Daniel died perhaps. It would have been befitting had he tried.

I glanced at him and took a deep breath. “Maybe you should sit down, Lucca,” I said. “Pacing isn’t going to bring him back.”

His greenish-brown eyes turned toward mine. The creases gradually released his eyebrows. His straightened posture slumped as he took a seat on the sofa. “I’m sorry, honey,” he said. He held his breath for a moment and released it. “I know I’m rather difficult to deal with at the moment, but—”

“—You don’t have to apologize for how you feel.”

“I do,” Lucca replied. “You shouldn’t have to suffer.”

“You shouldn’t have to suffer alone,” I said.

Taking the palm of my hand and pressing it against his lips, I smiled. The feel of his soft thin lips against my skin always sent goose pimples up my arms. That was something he and Daniel had in common.

“You wanna get some takeout?” He asked.

I smiled. “Italian please,” I sang.

Lucca grinned. The corner of his lips curled just like Daniel’s used to. For a moment, I saw Daniel looking back at me; I saw Daniel holding my hand like Lucca did just now. Why did he have to turn his back against me? Why did he threaten to tell his brother about what we’d done before we all met up at the lake that day?

Daniel would have still been alive. Maybe…just maybe Lucca would have been in his place. It wasn’t like I didn’t love him. I did. I… was so… in awe with him… so driven by his adored words that one day we would have been living by the beaches in Virginia, soaking up the sun’s rays. That’s what I wanted.

“Let me hold onto this picture while you go to the restaurant,” I said. “It’ll do you some good.”

Lucca nodded. A tear trickled down the side of his cheek and rolled off the edge of his jawline. “Sure,” he said, handing me the picture. “Thanks for being here for me.”

I watched him grab his keys off the dining room table and make his way out of the front door. I sighed. I wondered if he knew what we’d done—what Eliza and I did. I wondered if he’d known and had just kept that little-known fact from me.

I pressed my back into the plushness of the sofa, wiggled, and rested my head against the headrest of the black couch. Its faux leather toyed with the tips of my fingers as I ran my hand across it. I held the photo in my other hand, staring at the contoured lines of Daniel’s smile. He and Lucca were doppelgangers. The only difference was their facial hair and eyes. Lucca’s had these beautiful greenish-brown eyes that I’d never seen before. They were mesmerizing, but they were not at all compared to Daniel’s. Every time he smiled at me, I could see the electricity flow through his pupils as if it danced about from iris to iris.

And his skin. The suppleness of it… the porcelain hue it showed… the way it used to—wait. Was that blood on Eliza’s shirt? I inspected the photograph closer, furrowing my eyebrows and narrowing my eyes as I panned the picture from left to right.

As many times I had seen this picture, I’d never known that there was a red stain on her shirt. I tapped my bottom lip with my index finger, then cocked my head to the side. Perhaps she stained her shirt with red paint or something like that. Perhaps she played with her niece before coming to the lake that day and fell into something red.

She was rather antsy that day too. For as long as I knew Eliza, she’d never get antsy. The woman had nerves of steel. Even when she was in pain, she never showed it. She always wanted people to see her smile, her bright eyes, and her perfect white teeth. I closed my eyes, lifting my head from the couch’s headrest.

Daniel’s voice echoed in my ears. Every word that slipped from his lips was, “We can’t do this anymore.”

A tear emerged from my closed eye and streamed down my cheek. What had Eliza said or done to him before he drowned?

“My God!” I gasped. “That wasn’t blood.” I examined the picture again, noticing that same red stain was smeared on the side of Eliza’s cheek. It was even faintly present on the corner of Daniel’s lips. They were seeing each other. They were really seeing each other. How the fuck could she had done that to me? Daniel was supposed to be mine. He was supposed to be the one I had children with. He was supposed to be here instead of Lucca.

Eliza lied to me. She lied to me about everything between her and Daniel. That was the reason she cried when we watched him drown.

The front door opened, forcing me to wipe away the watery stress from my face.

“Are you okay, honey?” Lucca said, placing a brown bag on the table. The aroma of bold tomato sauce and oregano and rosemary seasoned meatballs wafted up my nostrils. Yet, my stomach didn’t growl at its seduction.

“Yes,” I replied. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” he said. He opened the bag. “I ran into Eliza at the restaurant. She wanted me to give you this.”

Taking the small confetti adorned gift bag from his hand, I peered inside of it and waited. A picture of her and Lucca sat before my eyes.

“You look upset,” Lucca stated. “Are you sure you’re okay, honey?”

I gave a brave smile. He always wanted to interrogate me like I was his prisoner. “I’m fine. This was just something she meant to return to me a while back.”

He nodded. “Gotcha!”

“I’m going to go give her a call.”

“Okay,” he responded, getting two plates from the china cabinet and placing them on the table.

 I walked down the hall, studying the bag. This was the same bag I used to put her gift in two years ago for her birthday. As I walked inside our bedroom, I pushed the door up behind me, hoping Lucca didn’t hear it close. The last thing I needed was for him to come running behind me whining and crying.

I walked to our bed and sat down. I emptied the contents of the gift bag. That picture with her and Daniel smiling and holding hands with a pair of silver bands splattered onto the soft black comforter. A thin slip of paper fell beside the rings. Turning over the slip of paper, I read it aloud.

“Lucca knows. He knows everything. I hope you’re happy now.”

I looked back at the ajar door. Lucca stood there. His eyebrows furrowed. His hand gripped the doorknob tight until the red rushed away from his knuckles.

“I didn’t know you knew,” I said.

“I’ve known about the affair for quite some time,” Lucca replied.

“Lucca, I’m—”

“—Don’t. I don’t want it.”

“But I didn’t mean to—”

“Kill him,” he retorted. “Eliza told me everything. You pushed him off the boat knowing that he couldn’t swim.”

“He broke my heart.”

Lucca stepped inside the room, pulling a gun from his holster. He cocked it. “That’s why I told Eliza to be ready for me after dinner.”

I closed my eyes. She was never in love with Daniel. She wanted Lucca. I guess it never donned on me that he had a red stain smeared on the corner of his lips too. At least this way, Daniel and I could finally be together. Forever.