I sat alone in the kitchen with Marissa the next morning. I had arranged to meet her early on the pretext of settling the house accounts. Neither of us had any idea what would happen now that Galea was dead and his wife was missing, and I needed to know how much money was left in Malta for house maintenance. I’d decided, at Rob’s suggestion, that I’d have to try to contact Galea’s solicitors and make arrangements for the house and the Farrugia family, as well as for Dave Thomson, whose shipping bills had not been paid before Galea’s untimely demise. We went over the accounts and discussed how I planned to proceed. Then, as delicately as I could, I told her what Rob and I had learned the day before in Mellieha. She looked out the window for a long time before she began to speak, but when she did the words just poured out of her.
“I waited for him for a long, long time,” she began. “Long after I married Joseph, long after Anthony was born. I thought we were a couple, you know. We’d been together for at least three years. I helped him with his schoolwork; he’d never have got the scholarship without me, and I thought he would come back for me as he’d promised, to carry me away with him to an exciting new life in America. But of course he never did.
“He asked me to run away with him, you know. To elope. I can remember his excitement as he described what we would do. He said we’d write my parents after we got to Canada, when we were married, and that when he’d made his fortune, we’d bring them over too. He had very grand plans.
“But I thought it would kill my father. I was an only child, much adored and a little spoiled, a bit like Anthony, perhaps. I could not bring myself to run away. And I wanted to have a wedding. A real wedding. So Marcus went alone. He said he’d write, send me his address as soon as he got settled, but the letter never came. For a while I deluded myself into thinking that something terrible must have happened to him, but in my heart I think I always knew this wasn’t so. He never knew about Anthony. I didn’t know myself until after he had gone.
“Joseph saved me from a terrible disgrace. He is very kind, you know. But more than that, he is direct and dependable. Over time I have come to value these qualities a very great deal.
“Joseph was a widower. His wife and baby daughter died one winter of the flu, a freakish accident really. For several years after that, he remained alone. He was a friend of my uncle, my father’s younger brother, and I guess he heard what happened from him. My father, when I told him about the baby, went into his room and closed the door and stayed there two days. After that he never was the same.
“When Joseph made his offer of marriage to my father, I was reluctant at first to accept. I still expected a letter from Marcus and believed that when he heard about the baby, he would come back to marry me. My father hit me, slapped me across the face, when I told him I wanted to wait for Marcus. It was the first and last time he would ever strike me. I left his house that night and never returned. My father died six months later, my mother shortly after that.
“And so I married Joseph and we moved to Siggiewi. Anthony was born soon after. Joseph is a good man, but life has not been easy, moving to a new town so far from home. Oh, I know by American standards it is not very far, but it seemed a great distance to me. It took a long time to reestablish ourselves, for Joseph to get work. Joseph worked pretty steadily around Mellieha where he was known. When we moved he had to start all over again, and jobs were very slow coming in the early years. Here people deal with those they know, relatives and friends. But we’ve managed. I did what I could. I sold my lace embroidery work, and worked for a while part-time in a store.
“We were very happy when Joseph got several months’ steady work on this house. We were a little worried about what would happen when the project was finished, but then one day, Joseph came home and told me the owner was looking for a couple to watch over the property for him, caretakers of sorts. He suggested we both go and present ourselves to the owner and apply for the job.
“I know you are thinking that it is strange that I didn’t guess by now who the owner was, but Joseph never referred to Marcus… Martin by name. You may think it is even more strange that Joseph didn’t know who Anthony’s father was. But we never spoke of such things. Joseph always said that our lives before we married were to be considered a closed book, never to be reopened. He said we both had loved other people, but that we were now a family. So I have never asked him about his first wife, nor ever talked about Marcus to him. Joseph has always been the type to keep to himself; he hates gossip, so while there was talk around Mellieha, it never reached his ears.
“Can I describe that day to you? Anthony, Joseph, and I, all in our Sunday best, drove over to the house to meet the owner and see if we passed muster as potential caretakers. Sometimes I wonder what we must have looked like, the four of us standing in a little circle outside the house, only Anthony oblivious to the little drama that was unfolding. How the Fates must have laughed at the three of us, each coming almost simultaneously upon a sudden realization that would change our lives forever. Marcus knew right away, I’m sure of it, about Anthony. I could tell from the look he gave me, the way he looked back and forth between the two of us. And Joseph knew too, somehow.
“Marcus offered us the work. Joseph said we’d think about it. We had the most terrible row that night. Joseph said there was no way we’d accept the job. I said we had to, that I wanted a decent life for my son. In the end, he agreed. What choice did we have? God knows, we need the money. And Marcus has never touched me, not once. He never even shook my hand.
“No, what he did was much, much worse than that. It was not me he wanted, it was Anthony. He wanted a son.
“Anthony has not been an easy child to raise. He has his father’s restlessness, an almost frightening need for affection and approval, ambition way above his station in life, and at times a lack of sensitivity to those about him. But I think he is, at the heart, a good boy, and Joseph could not have loved his own son more.
“Marcus started spending time with the boy whenever he was in Malta. He took him around the island explaining all about the buildings, taking him to fine restaurants and buying him fancy clothes—all the things Joseph and I could not do. And gradually he began to drive a wedge between Anthony and his father… Joseph, I mean.
“I don’t blame Anthony. How could I? I was just as dazzled by Marcus Galea when I was his age. Anthony talked incessantly about Marcus, and finally announced he wanted to be an architect. I don’t think I ever noticed how good Anthony is at drawing. I was as proud as any mother at the pictures he drew for me, and I thought some of the chalk drawings he did of the streets around our town were quite lovely, but I didn’t see the talent there. Marcus did.
“The idea of sending Anthony to study architecture was so far beyond our means that it was ludicrous. But then Marcus came to the house and offered to pay for Anthony’s education. He said he would speak to the dean of a school of architecture in Rome where he’d lectured, and try to get Anthony accepted there. But then he suggested that a preferable alternative would be the University of Toronto where he had graduated and where he was on the Board of Governors. He said that Anthony could live with him and his wife while he was at school to save money. Anthony was thrilled by the idea of going to America. I could see it in his eyes. But I watched the light go out in Joseph’s.
“I looked at Marcus standing there with his smug little smile and his expensive clothes—my God, his sunglasses probably cost more than Joseph could make in a month!—and I hated him. Really, truly hated him. He knew we wouldn’t say no, that we would not jeopardize our son’s future!”