Hidden Heart (18 page)

She waited for Alessandro
to say or do something, but he didn’t. He just looked around, hands
on his waist and shook his head.

“
If we would’ve met a bear
on the way here, I would’ve thought he ate your tongue, but I
haven’t seen any, did you?”

He dropped his backpack
then rolled with her in the grass. “Always looking for trouble,
aren’t you?”

She laughed heartedly and
the sound bounced back from the slopes around them. They lay in the
grass and held hands. White, fluffy clouds moved slowly across the
sky; somewhere close a woodpecker knocked rapidly.

“
This is indeed
breathtaking… thanks for bringing me here,” Alessandro whispered.
He pulled her closer.

Tessa snuggled and breathed
in his musky aftershave. She closed her eyes.
I can do this…now’s the time…

“
Alessandro, I need to tell
you something…something very important to me…” she swallowed hard
and tried to find the right words. “I would totally
under—”

A scream pierced the
silence and both jerked and stood at the same time.

“
Help, someone please
help!” The voice came from the left side, and as they ran in that
direction, a woman limped towards them.

“
What happened to you?”
Tessa asked when the young woman fell in Alessandro’s
arms.

Her breath still broken,
she spoke Romanian. “I…I hiked with my friends and…I stayed behind
to…relieve myself…and they walked away…and then I got sidetracked
and…wanted to take pictures…and before I knew, they were gone…I
stepped on a rock and my ankle hurts badly. I then started to walk
back trying to remember our trail, and I saw you coming up the hill
and yelled for you, but you didn’t hear me and then I tried to
hurry before you left…please help me!”

Tessa translated to
Alessandro. He helped the young woman sit on a boulder and took off
her shoe as gently as he could. Her ankle looked swollen and
bruised. He pulled Tessa’s scarf out of the backpack and wrapped it
tight around the ankle.

“
We have to carry her down
and take her to the emergency room.”

“
What is he saying?” the
woman asked wiping her tears away.

“
We’ll take care of you,
don’t worry,” Tessa replied.

She looked at the sky and
saw the clouds moving in. If they didn’t move fast enough, they may
get stuck in the rain before they could reach her cabin.

“
We better go,” she
said.

The trail seemed harder
while carrying Lidia, the injured woman, Alessandro on one side,
Tessa on the other. They tried as hard as they could to sustain
her, but in some areas, the trail was too narrow and only one
person at a time could walk it. When she put her foot down, the
woman’s cry tore the air.

By the time they reached
Tessa’s cabin, it was dark. Rain caught up with them as they
started on the last slope before turning onto the path to her
cabin.

“
Here, sit down here.” They
helped Lidia sit, then Alessandro brought two pillows and elevated
her foot.

“
Tell him I’m really
grateful for his help,” Lidia sniffled.

“
I’ll bring you dry
clothes, stay put,” Tessa said.

When she got back
downstairs, Alessandro had the fire started while Lidia kept a pack
of ice over her swollen ankle.

“
If you have some pain
killers it might be a good idea to give it to her. She’ll be in
pain for the next few days. If the rain doesn’t stop, we can’t take
her to town. You okay?”

He came closer and rubbed
Tessa’s shoulders. She nodded and handed him a t-shirt and dry
pants. They went in the other room to change out of their drenched
clothes, while Lidia did the same in the living room.

The cabin felt cold and the
rain pounded with force the whole night. It didn’t stop on Sunday
and by the time they should’ve driven back to Bucharest, the
driveway was flooded.

“
My father will send a
truck up here to get us,” Lidia said after hanging up with her
parents. She spoke to them the night before, told them where she
was and what happened. Then her father demanded to speak to Tessa,
who assured him, his daughter was out of danger and that Tessa
would take good care of her. He seemed able to relax and told her
that as the village’s magistrate, he’d love to repay them somehow
and would forever be indebted.

“
It’s okay, Lidia. We don’t
mind having you stay here. I think the driver will be in danger, no
matter how good of a vehicle he drives. Look out the window, the
rain washed off any trace of a path. He might get stuck somewhere
on the road and that would be really bad. Please call your dad back
and tell him we’ll be fine. Hopefully the rain will stop by
tomorrow.”

***

“
Oh my God, this story
seems like a scene from a movie,” Eva said.

“
No kidding,” Tessa said.
She took a sip of green tea and continued, “Monday morning the rain
finally stopped and by noon two trucks with these huge wheels
pulled in my completely underwater driveway and the father jumps
out of one followed by the mother and a doctor. Everyone talks at
the same time and they take us down to the village and there is
this restaurant completely reserved for us. Lidia tells everyone
how she fell and we saved her and people are
ooh
-ing and
ah
-ing and I have to translate to
Alessandro. Then they didn’t let us leave until we had lunch
together and took pictures.”

Tessa slumped back in her
chair. She felt exhausted and the day just started. She had a
throbbing headache since the day before and it wouldn’t go away no
matter how many aspirin she took. She closed her eyes and massaged
her temples, hopping a miracle would happen. She needed to get her
thoughts together. Five weeks had passed by and she still couldn’t
figure out a way to approach Alessandro. The last opportunity she
had was atop the mountain before they spotted Lidia.

The doctor’s office called
to confirm the date she scheduled the abortion, a week from today.
She had just one week left before the big day that would change her
life forever. She’d have to live knowing she’d killed her own baby.
The thought alone magnified her headache. But she didn’t allow
herself to think too much for fear she’d change her mind and then
would be too late for a pregnancy interruption.

This baby didn’t have a
place in her life. The decision made, nothing could stop her, and
all she had to do was come clean with Alessandro. She wanted
nothing more than to be with him, yet her situation didn’t allow
her to fully enjoy it. She felt as she was robbing him from a real
relationship.

“
Sorry, what were you
saying?”

It finally registered with
her that Eva had been talking for a few minutes now, and a few
words caught her attention.

“
I said, and if you are too
tired you should go home.”

“
No, not that,
before.”

“
Oh, I said that Mr.
Popescu, the farmer called and said you should call this number.
It’s very important.”

“
When did he call? Did he
say anything else?”

“
Yesterday and actually the
guy freaked me out, because he whispered more than he talked, and
it took me a while to understand what he was saying. I had him
repeat the number three times until I got it right. Here, I can’t
make the connection, he said he will only talk to you and no one
else.”

Chapter 9

Tessa
left the office ten minutes after talking with the farmer.
She’d meet him at a restaurant far away on the other side of
Bucharest, the opposite direction from Otopeni. He sounded nervous
on the phone and it took her a while to convince him that no one
else was listening to their conversation.

He spoke of some bad news
he had for her, but went no further. Then he agreed to meet her
only after she promised she’d come alone and no one would know
where they’d meet.

“
Mr. Popescu, if you want
me to help you, you need to tell me more.”

Tessa sat across from the
older farmer who kept looking at the door and shifting nervously in
his chair. His faded shirt and trousers had seen better times. His
big calloused palms, with dirty fingernails held the glass with
white knuckles as if expecting someone would take it. He had
ordered a glass of vodka and its strong smell made Tessa’s stomach
roll up and down. The restaurant resembled an old bodega with poor
lighting, cheap furniture and tired-of-life looking waitresses. She
played with her water glass, hoping to get in and out of the dump
as soon as possible.

“
No one knows where she
disappeared, but people say they got rid of her,” the farmer
stuttered.

“
Who disappeared? And who
are
they
?” No
matter how much she tried to understand him, nothing made
sense.

He looked again around him,
leaned forward and said, “The notary.”

Tessa looked dumbfounded at
him, unable to process his words. She opened her mouth to say
something, but nothing happened.

He realized he’d shocked
her and nodded to confirm what he had just said. He signaled the
waitress for another vodka.

“
What do you mean, she
disappeared?” Tessa said when she finally regained her
voice.

“
Just like this,” he
snapped his fingers. “Her office has brown papers on the windows
and her employees are all mum, walk in and out carrying boxes. My
theory, if anyone wants to listen to me is…we’ll never see her
again.”

His grimace made Tessa
shiver. The way the glassy-eyed, large man leaned forward and spoke
with a vodka-tainted grimace creeped her out. Under different
circumstances, she’d dismiss his words in a blink of an eye. What
if he was right? Her mind raced.

“
So, how long has she been
gone?”

“
Three days, going on
four.”

“
And when did her people
start cleaning the office?”

“
Yesterday and they didn’t
stop until late at night. They were still doing it as I passed by
on my way here.”

Tessa gathered her purse
and keys and signaled the waitress for the bill. She paid cash for
his drinks and left a small tip on the table.

“
I’ll drive you home if you
wish, Mr. Popescu.” She stood and waited for him.

Mr. Popescu drank his last
glass of vodka, then followed her outside. “I’d rather take the
bus. I don’t want to be seen with you, if you don’t mind. I don’t
trust the people in my neighborhood and ever since I got the money
for my land it has been difficult to trust anyone. It’s like,
relatives I haven’t ever seen show up with all kind of favors to
ask for, mainly trying to get money from me. I don’t sleep at night
for fear someone might break into my house and steal my money. It
happened to one or two farmers already.”

“
Have you tried to use a
bank and open an account instead of keeping it under your
mattress?”

“
Pah, I don’t trust no
bank.”

They shook hands and Tessa
walked back to her car. She got inside, turned on the key in the
ignition, then turned the key back to the off position, cutting the
engine. She had a feeling the notary played a key role in the fraud
allegation. She felt this before, but could never follow through
since her feeling came from instinct and not from real
evidence.

She drove to the notary’s
office and pulled in as someone walked outside carrying a big
box.

“
Hey, can I ask you
something?” Tessa said, approaching the woman.

She looked briefly at Tessa
then bowed her head and hurried to a nearby car. “I have nothing to
say. We aren’t allowed to talk to the press. No
comments.”

“
I am not from the press.
You don’t remember me? I came here quite a few times to close on
the deals with the farmers; you know, the big land
sale.”

The woman stopped in her
tracks, and by the look on her face, Tessa knew she had recognized
her.

“
I didn’t do it. I have no
part in this and I told Corina not to do it either, but she was
scared she’d be fired if she didn’t do it,” the woman blurted
out.

Tessa grabbed the woman’s
arm. “What did Corina do?” She remembered Corina, the notary’s
assistant, the one that helped her sign the contracts and stamped
them afterwards.

The woman flinched at
Tessa’s touch. She shook her head in denial, “Please don’t call the
police, I have no part in this, you have to believe me,” she
pleaded.

“
I promise not to call the
police if you talk to me.”

The woman put the heavy box
in the trunk, opened the door to the driver side and said before
taking off, “The contracts, the real ones, hadn’t been damaged by
any flooding.”

***

Tessa lay in bed, her back
to Alessandro. When she got home, she felt as if something had
punched her in her stomach. She told him she didn’t feel well and
went to bed without dinner. He checked on her several times, but
she feigned sleep. Then, he came to bed, hugged her and soon she
heard his paced breath playing out the rhythm of peaceful
sleep.