The Diamond Secret by Ruth Wind

abruptly, standing, not even caring if it seemed rude.
    Automatically, I checked the locks on the doors, tugged the curtains over the stove closed, put spoons and cups into the sink. "Help yourself to whatever you need," I said. "You can sleep in the second room, just there." I pointed out the door.
    "Thank you," he said, standing. The bandage stood out in a white rectangle on his tanned forehead. A curl stuck to it, glossy black. He seemed shy as he said, "May I sleep with you? Not for sex, just to lie down with a human on such a cold night?"
    "Do women really fall for that line?" I said, blinking irritably.
    "Sylvie—" he said, reproach in his voice.
    I shook my head. My braid swung with the movement. "I don't care what you do. Stay. Go. Whatever you want. I'm to bed."
    He followed me into the room, and we crawled under the big thick coverlet, soft flannel stuffed with batting. No top sheet, just that muffling weight of cover boring down on my body. I fluffed my pillows, put one between us.
    God. It felt wonderful to just stop moving, to lie down instead of sitting upright. "I am so tired!"
    Luca murmured. His body warmth was like a hot water bottle, taking the chill off the bed. Near the ball of my right foot was the arch of his left. I would have to be careful not to curl up around him.
    He settled his hand on my hip. "Is this all right?"
    "Yeah."
    I sighed into the softness of the bed. Wind buffeted the caravan, almost rocking it with gusts, and the sound of the driving rain muffled even the sound of the surf not far away on the rocks.
    Somehow, the combination made me think sleepily of Paul. Because I was so tired, my usual defenses were gone, and memories flooded into my half-sleeping brain.
    I thought of a Frenchman with long, elegant hands.
    To distract myself I said to Luca, "If you are descended from royalty, does that mean you are royal yourself?"
    "Minor."
    "You are minor royalty?"
    "Cousins to the royal family. Not that there has been a monarch for a long time, so it doesn't matter."
    "So why did you become a thief? You seem intelligent. Why crime?"
    "My father," Luca said, "was a hero. He fought the communists in my country, and he was killed. My mother, her heart was broken, and she did not last long afterward."
    He paused so long that I dozed, waiting for the answer. "I became a thief to prove you have to take what you want. To prove myself," he said, his voice growing softer. "Now I would like to show that I am more the man my father was."
    Fathers. Noble, or not. Honorable, or not. Available, or not. Mothers get so much of the credit and blame in our lives, but fathers leave indelible marks, too.
    I thought of my own father, and of others who had wanted to prove themselves. All my unresolved issues, which had been stirred up and lurking all day, came pouring out of the box where they mainly lived under lock and key—parent issues, mostly. The usual things a girl gets snared in when her mother dies too young.
    I thought, unavoidably now, of Paul.
    * * *
    I was twelve. A vulnerable age in a lot of ways, and a moment ripe for planting all sorts of things, and I have the usual abandonment issues that go along with sudden death.
    And it was very sudden. I know now that she and my father were on the verge of divorce because of my father's perpetual infidelities, that she was back in Scotland trying to find a place for us to live when she was killed in a most prosaic car accident: a woman in a hurry to get home from work ran a stop sign, and broadsided my mother's car. My mother's head was banged just right and she died. No flames, no big spinout. Just a stupid, pointless death.
    I don't remember my father being at the funeral. Intellectually, I know he was there, but I can't see him in my imagination. It was Paul holding my hand when she was buried, Paul who held me later as I sobbed and sobbed that afternoon, growing more and more hysterical until he picked me up, carried me to the bathroom of my grandmother's