Chapter IV
IV
The windows are open, the night is warm, and Charlotte is making dinner.
She stands at the counter in the kitchen of the one-room apartment they have shared for more than six years now. Charlotte wears Giada’s apron cinched around her waist, her hands moving in a well-learned piece of choreography.
She brings a ripe tomato to her nose, smells the soil and the sun, the earthy acid of the leaves, and for a moment—only a moment—Charlotte is convinced that if she bit down she would taste those things, instead of ash and rot.
But she doesn’t, sets the ripe fruit down, preferring to live in the promise instead of the grim truth.
Besides, the meal is not for her.
The onions hit the pan with a gasp, begin to sizzle as she peels the skin from the tomatoes, squeezes just hard enough to make the seeds spill out.
She chops the tomatoes, adds the sausage to the pan and stirs, no temptation to the smell of burning meat.
She adds the saffron and the wine before turning the tomatoes in, just as she’s watched Giada do a dozen times, with Charlotte’s arms hooked around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder as she pronounced the dish, rolled it over her tongue.
Malloreddus alla campidanese.
It sounded like a song on Giada’s lips.
A hundred and fifty years on this earth, and Charlotte’s mouth still breeds consonants, teeth clipping words into sharp relief.
Time should have worn the edges down by now, softened her accent into something smooth, ambiguous, but it seems pressed in amber with her skin, her curls, the other details of her life before.
She has learned to read and speak Italian, but the musicality of the accent still evades her, while Giada’s dances, sways, full of gentle swells, a paper boat bobbing in a bath.
Malloreddus alla campidanese.
“What does it taste like?” Charlotte asked the first time Giada made the dish.
She took a bite, closed her eyes, and answered in a sigh. “It tastes like home.”
Now Charlotte covers the pan and lets it cook, tries to focus on the dish instead of her own appetite. She confides nearly everything in Giada. Everything except for this—that she is always hungry.
“Have you had enough?” Giada will ask after offering Charlotte her wrist, her throat, and she will say yes, when the truth is that there is no such thing, that the hunger ebbs and flows, but never dies—that she could drink and drink and drink from now until the end of days and never know the meaning of the word full.
She is a colander, not a goblet, a vessel full of holes.
So she says yes, and goes for walks while Giada sleeps, cleans up the mess wherever it is left, and pretends that she is sated.
Laughter echoes up the stairs. Giada usually sings when she comes home, knowing Charlotte will be able to hear through the intervening walls and floors, but as she crosses the flat and the sounds grow brighter, more solid, Charlotte can tell this isn’t music.
Giada’s talking to someone, one of the downstairs neighbors, no doubt, carrying on in jaunty Italian before they say good night and peel away to their own rooms.
Charlotte opens the door, strikes a pose in her borrowed apron, imagining the laughter, the delight in Giada’s eyes as she reaches the top floor, tugging the pins from her hair, kicking off her shoes.
But Giada isn’t alone.
Charlotte has never felt vertigo, or the sickness that comes over bodies at sea, but staring at the woman on Giada’s arm she feels something like it, the sudden loss of balance, the nauseous rocking of a world unmoored.
Sabine.
Sabine, whose hair hangs loose and long and bright enough to burn the air.
Sabine, whose hand is hooked through Giada’s elbow, fingers dimpling soft skin.
Sabine, who smiles patiently, like a parent who’s caught a child in the act of stealing, and is about to punish them for their own sake.
“Speak of the devil!” says Giada, seeing Charlotte there. “I ran into your friend down on the street. She said—mi dispiace, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Sabine.” The word tumbles out of Charlotte’s mouth.
In the hall, its owner smiles.
She’s dressed in black leather pants, tight as poured paint, and a coat the color of a fresh bruise, the sleeves flaring wide, the fabric studded all over with shining beads, as if someone shattered a mirror and then stitched it back together, each piece too small to reflect anything but light.
Necklaces tangle like weeds around her throat.
“That’s right!” continues Giada, oblivious to the way the air has turned to ice, to the fear in Charlotte’s face, the crook of Sabine’s mouth as the light flickers on and off behind her eyes.
“Giada,” Charlotte murmurs softly, but her lover doesn’t hear. She’s rambling, energy spilling over the way it always does after a job, all that movement bottled up by the hours of posing, while Sabine stands still as a statue, eyes boring straight ahead, as if Giada isn’t even there.
“She said she was passing through Rome, and hoped to see you, couldn’t remember if you lived at nine or nineteen . . .”
Panic rings through Charlotte like a bell, and she knows Sabine can hear it. It’s been so long, she’s let her walls come down. There was no reason for them anymore, she thought.
She thought that chapter of her life was over.
What a fool.
The room flickers, and Charlotte remembers a winter in Vienna.
A lavish flat. A marble chessboard, one of the many relics left behind.
A curtain of white beyond the windows, a pretty but miserable month, and so Sabine taught her how to play.
And no matter how good Charlotte got, Sabine was always better.
Her favorite thing to do was chase Charlotte’s king into a corner.
But once there, she would allow her to escape, forcing her to flee around the board.
Check, check, check, she’d say until she got bored enough to end the game.
Charlotte stares at Sabine now, across the narrow threshold.
It is hard to look away—it has always been hard to look away—but right now, she keeps her focus on Sabine because she is afraid to glance at Giada.
Afraid to remind Sabine that she is there.
If Charlotte had a heartbeat of her own, it would be racing.
Instead, there is only a horrible leaden weight, a static like the night before a storm.
And in that moment, that suspended breath, all she wants to do is go back, unpick the the last six years, unravel it all to the moment her blood dripped onto the drawing, the moment Giada broke her pose, and rose, and crossed the room to touch her cheek, just so she can catch Giada’s fingers, keep them there, look into her lovely face and tell her how the story ended. To name the one that took her soul.
But she didn’t, and now she can’t, and Sabine is just standing there as if to say, Your move, my love.
“What are the odds?” asks Giada cheerfully.
Sabine’s smile splits open like a seam.
“Indeed,” she says, and there is that voice again, that whetstone scrape, that feral purr that once made Charlotte come undone. Sabine runs a hand over Giada’s fair hair as if stroking a child. Or a pet. “Who knows how long I might have wandered?”
Giada finally notices the apron cinched around Charlotte’s waist. “Is that mine?” she asks, and then, “Something smells delicious!” She turns toward Sabine, drawing breath, and Charlotte can tell that she’s going to invite her in.
“ NO, ” snaps Charlotte, and maybe it’s the harshness in her voice, or maybe it’s the fear in her eyes, but Giada finally grasps that something is wrong. Her good mood falters, and her smile falls.
“Giada,” says Charlotte softly, her hand twitching forward in a silent plea, Come to me, come quick, and Giada understands, starts forward toward the open door, toward her, toward home, but Sabine’s hand is still resting on her hair, and as she pulls away, it vises, and the woman’s head snaps back, her balance thrown.
She yelps, in shock, in pain, as Sabine’s arms fold around her, hold her close, like dancers, cheek to cheek.
Charlotte lunges forward, one step, two, catches herself just before the open door.
She has had the sense to claim this flat, to pace the floor and touch the walls and call it hers.
And now the doorframe is the only thing standing between her and Giada, between her and Sabine, between her and the death waiting in the hall.
This is check, not mate, and they both know it.
Sabine’s mouth twitches. “Do you see?” she coos to the woman in her arms. “She does not love you.”
“That isn’t true,” gasps Charlotte. “Giada, look at me.”
She does, fear shining in her eyes. “Carlotta—” she whispers.
“If she did, she would come out.” Sabine’s gaze hangs on her but the words are pressed, knifelike, into Giada’s cheek. “If she did, she would have kept you safe. Would have made you like her. Like me.”
“ Sabine, ” snarls Charlotte. “ Let her go. ”
“But here you are, so soft, so fragile.” Sabine’s hand must have tightened in Giada’s hair, because she whimpers, her head pulled back, her throat exposed.
“Nothing but a plaything. A distraction.” Sabine’s teeth come to rest in the curve of her neck.
Giada trembles, and Charlotte’s nails dig into the doorframe.
“Don’t.”
“There is still time,” says Sabine. “She can still save you. All she has to do is step across that threshold. All she has to do is come out, or let us in.”
Hatred rolls through Charlotte. Her fingers carve divots in the wood. She is a coward, but not a fool. She knows Sabine better than anyone, knows there is no saving the girl beyond the door. That if she moves, she will only damn them both.
“What do you think, Giada?” teases Sabine. “Will she do it, if you beg?”
Her grip loosens, just enough for Giada to look Charlotte in the eyes again.
“Mia Carlotta,” she pleads softly, “will you—”
Sabine snaps her neck.
The crack echoes in the stairwell.
“Too late.”
Charlotte clenches her teeth against the scream, but a ragged sob still escapes as Giada slumps, lifeless, to the floor. Something deep inside her tears, pain and fury sharp as sunlight, and Charlotte wants to lunge through the door, to rip the heart from Sabine’s chest.
But she can’t. She can’t.
Charlotte knows her hands will stop before they can break skin, frozen by the words she spoke, all her anger rendered impotent by a promise made eighty years ago.
Sabine looks down at Giada’s broken body. The blond hair trailing across the wood. Her limbs so perfectly still, as if she’s simply holding a new pose.
“You should have come back to bed.”
Charlotte drags her gaze from the dead to death itself. “How did you find me?”
“How could I lose you?” Sabine steps over Giada. “You are my heartbeat. My feral rose. I laid you down in the midnight soil. I watered you until you bloomed. It is my job to tend our plot, and prune any weeds that try to grow.”
As she speaks, Sabine closes the distance until only the doorway stands between them.
Charlotte holds her ground, silently reminding the floor and the walls that this is her house, that she has paced the length of every board, in every room, and whispered her name into the walls, and declared the space her own.
Just as Sabine taught her all those years ago.
And still, she doesn’t know if it will hold, not until Sabine stops at the threshold. The hem of wood, a boundary as thin as glass.
“I’ve missed you, Charlotte.” She leans in, as if to fog the pane.
“Why don’t you let me in?” This close, she can see the way Sabine’s eyes flicker, hazel to black and back again, like faulty wiring, can smell the coils of her hair, earthy and sweet, can glimpse her old lover dancing like light beneath the surface of a deep, dark well.
It would be easy to let her eyes unfocus, to believe the woman standing at her threshold is her Sabine. The one who made her feel safe. Feel loved. Feel free.
But she isn’t that person anymore. Hasn’t been for ages now.
“You are not welcome,” growls Charlotte. “You can’t come in.”
Sabine smiles, and the illusion breaks, the woman she once loved melting away like wax, revealing the dead-eyed stranger, who cocks her head and says, “Something is burning.”
Charlotte stiffens, then smells it too.
She turns and rushes down the hall, into the kitchen.
Smoke rises from the stove, along with a rancid odor, singed meat and burned sauce.
She turns off the burners, stares down into the charred remains of the dinner she was making.
For Giada, whose laughter always walked a step ahead.
For Giada, who could never sit still, except when she was working. For Giada, who—
She sweeps the pots and pans from the stove, metal ringing as it clatters to the floor, contents splattering the cabinets, and at last her anger overtakes her fear, and she thinks No, fuck this, fuck her, storms out of the kitchen and down the hall, back to the front door, which still hangs open.
Sabine is gone.
But Giada isn’t.
Her body lies in a heap on the hall floor, an awkward jumble of limbs, head bent at an angle even she could never hold. Charlotte steps over the threshold, knows that Sabine won’t spring out of the shadows now, because it would be no fun, because that’s all it is to her.
Check.
Not mate.
Charlotte sinks to her knees beside Giada.
She lifts her, as gently as she can, and carries her inside.
Somewhere between the doorway and their bedroom, Charlotte splinters, begins to cry.
Heaving sobs that rack her body, bloody tears spilling down her cheeks.
She cannot stop, and so they both end up stained, Charlotte trailing red like a mortal wound as she takes Giada to bed, lays her body in the nest of sheets they always seem to leave behind.
Charlotte lies down beside Giada, feels the warmth slipping away second by second as her body cools.
Giada’s cheek is turned away. She could be sleeping, but she’s not, and Charlotte turns her stained face into the pillow, and screams. Screams until her lungs give way.
Until her heart shatters in her chest. Until there’s nothing left.
She wants to stay, to cry herself to sleep, but she can’t.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers hoarsely into Giada’s hair.
Then she gets to her feet.
She doesn’t pack. There is no point.
The only thing worth saving is already dead.
She leaves the front door open, so someone will come.
And then, once again, Charlotte runs.