Chapter 7 The Gate Stays Shut
SERAFINA
The drive back to the main house takes only minutes, and my hands begin shaking again after I turn off the engine in the gravel courtyard.
The office lights are still visible from here, warm yellow squares against the dark hillside. I don't look at them. I look at the house instead, at the bedroom window on the second floor where I got dressed hours ago, where I thought tonight would be different.
I sit in the car until my hands are steady again. It is past midnight. The anniversary is over, and I still have to go upstairs to the room I share with him.
My keys are still in my hand. I look down at them, at the familiar weight of metal against my palm, and make a decision.
I'm not staying here tonight.
The bedroom is dark when I push open the door, and I don't turn on the overhead light.
I switch on the lamp on my nightstand. That is enough.
I pull my small suitcase from the top of the wardrobe and set it open on the bed, and then I stand there for a moment, looking at the room I've shared with Rafael since we married.
The amber earrings are in my jewelry drawer.
Beatrice gave them to me this evening, before everything fell apart, and I never put them on.
I open the drawer now and look at them, the way the gold catches the lamplight, the deep warm color of the stones.
I told myself I would wear them on a better day.
I close their box and put it beside the suitcase. Beatrice chose them for me. Whatever happens with Rafael, I don't want to leave her kindness in this drawer.
I pull open my dresser drawer and start folding. Underwear. A few tops. The soft grey sweater that needs no careful folding. Trousers that aren't these ones, because these ones smell like the office now, like lemon verbena and old paper and whatever perfume Marisol was wearing tonight.
A soft knock at the door makes me freeze with a blouse half-folded in my hands.
"Serafina?" Beatrice knocks again when I don't answer. "I heard you come in. May I?"
I set the blouse in the suitcase and cross to the door.
When I open it, Beatrice is standing in the hallway in her dressing gown, her silver hair loose around her shoulders.
She looks at my face, then past me to the open suitcase on the bed, and her expression shifts from concern to something harder.
"What happened?" She steps into the room without waiting for an invitation, and I don't stop her. "Where is he?"
"At the office." I close the door behind her and lean against it for a moment, suddenly exhausted. "Marisol called me. She said he wasn't feeling well. She said she'd been looking after him."
Beatrice's eyes narrow. "Looking after him how?"
"I don't know." The words come out rough, scraped raw by everything I've been holding back. "I don't know what happened before I got there. I only know what I saw when I walked in."
"What did you see?" Beatrice draws the bedside chair closer but stays standing beside it.
I tell her. The open door, the lamplight.
Rafael on the sofa with his shirt unbuttoned, Marisol bent over him with her hand on his shoulder and her hair brushing his skin.
The way she straightened when she heard me, unhurried, like she had every right to be there.
The way she refused to leave us alone even when I asked.
Beatrice listens without interrupting, her face growing stiller and colder with every sentence.
When I finish, she's silent for a long moment, her hands clasped in front of her like she's physically restraining herself from saying something she can't take back.
"I'll ask Corrado to go down to the office." She takes her phone from her dressing-gown pocket and writes a message. "Someone should check on Rafael. I can stay with you."
"I don't want you to leave." The admission surprises me, how much I mean it. "I don't want to be alone right now. But I can't stay here either. I need to go somewhere that isn't his house, somewhere I can think without wondering when he's going to walk through the door."
"Your parents." Beatrice nods like she expected this. "They're close. They'll take you in."
"They'll want to know why." I turn back to the suitcase. "And I don't know how to explain it without making it sound like I'm certain something happened. I'm not."
"You don't have to be certain about that to need some space.
" Beatrice moves to stand beside me, close enough that I can smell the lavender she uses in her bath.
"I sat with you at that table tonight. You don't have to explain to me why you're hurt.
You can leave because you need to. You don't have to prove anything first."
"I offered to help." I pick up the blouse again, finish folding it, set it in the suitcase with mechanical precision.
"Weeks ago. When the buyer meetings started.
I asked if I could be part of it, if I could do something useful instead of just waiting for him to come home. Marisol told me they had it handled."
"And Rafael?" Beatrice sets her phone on the bedside table. "What did he say when you asked?"
"He told me to leave the visit with her.
" I move to the closet, pull out a cardigan I bought last spring and haven't worn since.
Is it too light for this time of year? Does it matter?
I'm packing for a few days, not a new life.
"It wasn't only her. I asked him myself, and he told me I didn't need to carry the stress. "
"You made yourself clear." Beatrice lifts the suitcase lid higher while I make room for the cardigan. "He knew you wanted to be included."
"He knew what I wanted tonight, too." I fold the cardigan and put it in the suitcase. "You were there. I don't want to keep explaining why it mattered."
Beatrice is quiet for a moment, watching me pack.
Then she crosses to my vanity table and picks up the small bag I use for toiletries when I travel.
She brings it to me without a word, and I take it, grateful for the help, grateful that she's not telling me to calm down or think this through or consider what I might be throwing away.
"You know I love my son," she says quietly.
"I have loved him since before he was born, and I will love him until the day I die.
But loving someone doesn't mean excusing them.
It doesn't mean pretending they haven't hurt the people who matter most." She touches my shoulder, a brief warm pressure.
"You matter, Serafina. You have mattered to this family since you were a little girl running through our groves.
Whatever happens between you and him, that doesn't change. "
"I need to get some things from my workshop." I set the toiletries bag in the suitcase and move toward the door. "My notebook. A few bottles. I can leave the rest for now."
"I'll come with you." Beatrice follows me along the corridor to the east wing. I switch on the workshop light before stepping inside.
The workshop smells like bergamot and cedar.
Rafael helped me set this up last Saturday, carried the heavy equipment from my parents' storage and arranged it where I wanted.
I remember the way he listened when I explained the layout, the way he stayed until everything was in place, the way he read a message about work and decided it could wait.
That afternoon was real. I can remember it and still leave tonight.
I need to focus on what I'm taking. The notebook is on the counter by the window, the small leather one where I record my formulas and observations.
The bottles are on the shelf above the extraction equipment, amber glass labeled in my handwriting.
I take three of them, the ones I'm actively working with, and wrap them carefully in a scarf before putting them in the small carrying bag by the bench.
"I can send someone for the rest of it," Beatrice says, watching me from the doorway. "Later this week, when you know what you want to do. You don't have to decide everything tonight."
"I know." I take one last look around the workshop, at the equipment Rafael helped me arrange, at the work I thought I'd be building for years. Then I turn off the light and close the door. "I know I don't have to decide. But I think I've already decided some of it."
We walk back to the bedroom together, and I finish packing in silence.
A few more clothes. My hairbrush. The book I've been reading, not because I think I'll read tonight but because it feels wrong to leave it behind.
I tuck the earrings into a pocket inside the suitcase and fit the small bag of bottles and my notebook on top of the clothes.
The zip catches on a sleeve. I free it and close the case.
"Call them before you go." Beatrice points to the phone outlined in my coat pocket. "Your mother will worry if you just appear in the middle of the night."
She's right. I pull out my phone and find my mother's number, and I stare at it for a long moment before pressing call. It rings twice before she picks up, her voice sleep-rough and immediately alert.
"Serafina? What's wrong?" My mother sounds awake by the time she finishes saying my name.
"I'm coming home." The words feel strange in my mouth, coming home when I thought this house would be my home for the rest of my life.
But my parents' house is where I grew up, where I learned to blend perfume, where I felt safe before I knew what it meant to feel unsafe.
"Can I stay for a few days? I'll explain when I get there. "
"Of course." No questions, no hesitation. Just acceptance, just love. "I'll put the kettle on. Your father will want to know what's happened."
"I'll tell you both." I sit on the edge of the bed, suddenly grateful that I made the call. "I just need to get there first."
I hang up and slide the phone back into my pocket. Beatrice is watching me with something that looks like pride, though I don't know what I've done to earn it.