Delly, and it was dark,
rainy... oh, Delly. I killed him, and I didn't tell any one," she
confessed. Crouched on her knees like a penitent under the darkness
of the blanket, Cindy felt the rush of contrition at last. Up until
that moment her ability to ignore the thing had been absolute. Once
or twice when her mind had wandered back to the appalling accident,
it did so with complete detachment, as if it were envisioning a toy
Mercedes knocking over a little toy man with a little toy dog in
his arms. But now her defenses were collapsing. Suddenly terrified
of the dark, she threw off the blanket. "I can't breathe under
here, Delly!"
"Of course you can breathe! Stay there until
we're through the toll booth. Now listen to me. It was an accident,
and you killed a man. But there was nothing in the circumstances
that you could do. Reporting it would not bring the man back. You
must not blame yourself. What's done is done. You must understand
that. I cannot speak now. There are cars opposite."
She continued to crouch reluctantly until
she felt the car come to a stop and heard the window roll down and
the clunk of the token, after which she ventured, "Now?" in a meek
voice from under the blanket.
There was no response.
It threw her. Cindy loved Delgado's Old
World authoritarianism and believed absolutely in everything he
said and did. In the two months that she'd known him, he had
replaced virtually all the men in her life: the father she'd never
known; the husband she'd known so little; even the executor of her
parents' estate, old Mr. Hinsley, whom she feared and disliked.
None of them had so completely taken her over as Delgado had; she
basked in it, this total possession by another.
But she thought that Delgado was testing her
unnecessarily now. Hadn't she already proved she'd do anything for
him? "Damn it, Delly, let me sit up," she whispered. "No one knows
who I am."
No response. They drove another ten minutes,
and Cindy, nearly in tears, said, "Delly? Oh, please." They were
going over the Jamestown Bridge now. Cindy recognized the whirring,
rutted sound of the tires on the metal mesh of the center span.
Five minutes later Delgado spoke. "Come out
now, Cindy dear. And if you promise to be very good, you shall have
an ice cream with your lunch."
'"Very funny." Nearly limp with
relief, Cindy scrambled awkwardly into the front seat. "Why are you
being so melodramatic about all this?" she asked, poking
ineffectually at her tumbled hair. She had to get her hands on a
blow-drier, and fast. "It's so unnecessary. I mean, what's the very worst case? That Alan or the police figure out I've faked my
suicide and run away? So what? Who would care?"
At that Delgado turned to her with raised,
finely shaped brows. "It was you, was it not, who wished to strike
back at the husband who abandoned you to pursue a mere trophy? I
understand such emotions. I understand the need for retribution. I
sympathize completely with you, Cindy. And yet you treat this as if
it were a child's game. It is not. Nor, I regret to say, is your
fleeing the scene of a fatal accident. And finally, of course,
there is the loss of some very valuable emeralds by your beautiful
friend."
"Oh, which reminds me. Can I have my watch
back now?"
Again he looked surprised. "My dear! Most
definitely not. We are trying to maintain a—how do you say it? A
low profile. I will dispose of the Bulgari, as well as the
emeralds, in Las Vegas. We do not wish to encourage scrutiny by
customs officials on either side of the Atlantic."
"I see," Cindy answered, although she did
not. With gentle naïveté she persisted. "Can I get another one once
we get to Lisbon, then?"
"Anything your heart desires, little
one."
Cindy lifted Delgados arm and snuggled
happily underneath it. "Oh, I am so happy to be getting away
from Newport, away from ... everything. If you only knew how I've
dreamed of your castle in Lisbon—"
"Not a castle," he interrupted. "A
villa."
"Don't be modest,