Something wasn’t right. Her mother wouldn’t call and pay expensive international fees unless there was real immediate danger.
Buck. What if he had gone to the house? No. He wouldn’t, would he? Wake up, Alice. The man is a criminal. Morals aren’t part of his vocabulary.
“Alice. Hi. Rachel tried to kill herself, and she’s been taken to the hospital. I’m sorry to disturb you, but I just had to vent with someone. To say it out loud,” her mother started, her voice urgent and congested as if she’d been crying. “Poor Brenda…”
Alice gripped the cell in her hand. She wished she could squeeze it so tight, it would disintegrate within her fingertips, and with it, all of her problems. Her problems. What a selfish thing to think. She willed the thought away. “I have to…I have to go back to Austin. My sister has tried to kill herself, and my mother can’t handle everything. Sorry.”
Lorenzo drew back in silence for the quickest moment, as if he tried to absolve what she had just said. “I’m coming with you,” he said without a blink.
“No. You don’t have to. You can stay. Hell, you have to stay. You need your opportunity to talk to Viola tomorrow.”
“Screw Viola. Your sister is in the hospital. I’m arranging the flight. Let’s go back to the house and grab our belongings. I’ll leave a note for Viola and have the butler give it to her. Follow me.”
Follow him? Within the next thirty minutes, Alice did just that. They grabbed their belongings; he called the airline and made reservations. He handwrote a note to Viola explaining what happened and gave it to Rogerio. She quivered as she changed from the lavish red dress into a pair of slacks and black top. He also slipped into casual clothes: a pair of dark denim pants and a green shirt.
Alice had called her mother and assured her she was on the way. Rachel had overdosed on prescription pills, and they were pumping her stomach. The doctors were hopeful she would be okay.
“I called a friend of mine who is married to one of the best doctors in Austin. He’ll review her chart and pay her a visit in the morning,” Lorenzo said before they buckled in for the flight.
She blinked. “Thanks. Really.”
What else could she say? She was used to him bossing her around about anything related to Cara, and even about the charade of this trip. That was normal. But for him to take charge when it came to her family affairs? Strange. Unusual. And, a wishful part of her whispered, nice.
Although she shouldn’t let that kind of useless optimism sweep her off her feet. Now with Rachel’s suicide attempt, her family needed her more than ever. There was no way she could go to New York with him. And that hurt more than a little.
During the entire flight and after Gordon picked them up from the airport and drove them to the hospital, Lorenzo second-guessed his decision. Why was he getting involved? It would have been much more practical to have stayed in Capri. By now slimy Paul Smythe would have invented whatever version of the story he chose to, and Viola could view Lorenzo leaving the property as him not wanting the paintings badly enough, or throwing in the towel. If he had stayed, he would have been able to explain his side of the story to Viola. Not anymore.
He itched to have his say. Yet he paced along the clean floors, with the scent of antiseptic clinging to the air. Alice kept at his side, striding toward the waiting room. A part of him that made no sense hadn’t allowed him to let her return to Austin without him. It didn’t matter why or how his leaving Viola’s would impact him.
Maybe he simply wanted to help because he wasn’t able to help Kristin. The image of finding Kristin’s body on the other side of the bed, so lifeless and pale, flashed through his mind.
He would have done more for Kristen if he had known. He hadn’t. She had struggled for years with addiction, and in the end, her kidneys just couldn’t handle it anymore.
“There they are,” Alice whispered, picking up her pace and heading to the area that consisted of a few chairs, couches, a TV, and an overflowing magazine rack. A petite woman with red hair rose from her seat. Alice’s mother. There was also a child who wore glasses and had her brown hair braided