The Giuoco Piano

Chapter 48 - El Pes dels Records

"Memory is like a curse. We fall into eternity, and memory is a weight that keeps pulling us to where we can never go back to."

― José Luís Peixoto, Antídoto"

Dread fills Roman. It feels as though his heart has stopped beating in his chest as she looks at him. It's only for a split second but it feels like a lifetime, and he is assaulted by memories of her. Grace leaves him handcuffed to the bed in the Salem Inn. Grace alternately trying to seduce him, taunt him, and escape him at the Ocoee cabin. Grace pretending to be Marlena in the motel near New Orleans.

This woman is not his wife.

She turns to look at Kim, the smile slipping from her lips and Kim is struck with the same certainty. This is not Marlena. This is not her sister-in-law, her friend of almost twenty years. This is a stranger, and a vicious, destructive one, at that.

"Doc..." Roman moans and Grace presses her eyes closed, wincing slightly. Then she turns her head to the right and flinches visibly as her hands curl into tight fists. She moans softly and presses her lips together, as if fighting an internal battle. Finally, her shoulders relax and the muscles in her face follow.

She opens her eyes and turns to look straight at Roman, her eyes warm and full of concern. "I'm sorry," she says softly, her eyes filling with tears. "I'm so sorry, Roman."

"Oh Doc," he launches himself at her and envelopes her in his arms, quivering with relief. "God baby, I was so scared for a minute then."

"What-?" Bo asks, not clear on what has just happened. Hope shakes her head in response. She has a fairly good idea of what just happened, seeing Marlena's glance at Roman.

"Roman, Roman!" Marlena struggles out of his embrace and pushes him back so that he's at arms-length. "I need some... can I have some space, please?" She swallows, her mouth dry and sticky. "Bo, could I have a glass of water?"

"Sure," Bo remains confused, but his questions remain unspoken. Instead, he goes over to the hutch and pulls out a bottle of sparkling mineral water. He twists the lid, the sound of the seal breaking strangely loud in the large room. He tips the bottle up, the water sloshing into a glass before he puts it back down on the mirrored surface which was cracked by the force with which his brother had slammed the vodka bottle down earlier.

He takes the glass back to Marlena and hands it to her.

"So, what happens now?" he asks. It's not aimed at anyone in particular. It's more a rhetorical question than anything, but he feels the need to break the painful silence that has descended since Marlena pushed Roman away.

"What happens now?" Marlena takes a mouthful of the water and swallows it before holding the glass on her knee. "The same thing that was always going to happen. I finish this. I make sure Carrie and Will go home."

"Doc, no!" Roman cries. "Honey, you can't!"

"Roman's right," Kim tells her. "Marlena, you... you are aware of what just happened, aren't you?"

"You spoke to Grace," Marlena's firm, steady voice belies the anxiety that is gnawing at the pit of her stomach. She remembers, all right. She remembers Grace murdering Alvaro Lloris with her hands. She remembers Grace taking her gun and emptying the clip into Lloris' brain, the life draining from his pale blue eyes as he tumbled over the side of the terrace.

And she remembers the way Grace spoke to the people she loves. The disdain and the pleasure at their distress. She can't subject them to any more of this madness. She can't make them spectators to her degradation, or even worse, accomplices to her crimes.