Chapter Fourteen
GIO
Lucia has been living with us for three weeks when I realize her things are everywhere.
Not in an intrusive way.
She hasn’t redecorated the house or filled the foyer with luggage. In fact, most of her belongings remain neatly arranged in the guest room as though she still expects someone to tell her she has overstayed her welcome.
But there are signs of her in every room.
A book lies facedown on the arm of a library chair.
A pale-blue sweater hangs over the back of a conservatory bench.
A pair of sandals waits beside the doors to the pool terrace.
The kitchen cabinet now contains a box of the lemon tea she likes in the evenings. A small ceramic bowl has appeared beside the sink to collect the paper tags after she uses them.
Angela calls it Lucy’s bowl.
That should tell me everything.
Even the house sounds different. Someone hums in the conservatory. A second female voice answers Angela in the kitchen. Footsteps cross the upstairs hall without pausing to decide whether they are permitted to continue.
Angela has also begun consulting Lucia about meals.
“What do you think?” she asks one morning, holding a spoonful of sauce beneath Lucia’s nose.
Lucia leans forward and tastes it. Her dark hair is twisted over one shoulder, and she closes her eyes as she considers the flavor.
“More salt?” she suggests.
Angela looks pleased.
“Exactly.”
I reach for the spoon.
Angela pulls it away.
“Use your own.”
“You let her taste it.”
“She was invited.”
Lucia takes another spoon from the drawer and hands it to me.
“Here.”
Angela looks betrayed.
Lucia smiles.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“No,” she agrees. “Not really.”
I taste the sauce.
It’s barely eight in the morning, but Angela is already preparing dinner. Something involving tomatoes, sausage, and enough garlic to incapacitate a small army. Steam fogs the windows above the sink, and bowls of chopped herbs cover half the island.
“It needs more salt,” I say.
Angela points the wooden spoon at me.
“That was Lucy’s idea.”
“A brilliant suggestion.”
“Go away.”
I steal a piece of sausage from the cutting board and dodge the dish towel she snaps at my shoulder.
Lucia laughs.
I’ve begun arranging entire days around that sound.
Not intentionally.
At least, not at first.
During her first week, I find reasons to check on her. She’s still learning the house, after all. Someone needs to make sure she hasn’t gotten lost between the library and the kitchen.
By the second week, she no longer needs help finding anything.
I continue checking.
I discover that she reads in the conservatory after breakfast, usually in the corner where the morning sun reaches the chair. She spends an hour with Marco in our mother’s old study most afternoons, working through records connected to Maria Rossi and the identity of Lucia’s father.
She plays pool before dinner if she can convince someone to join her.
She prefers tea after eight because Marco once told her caffeine interferes with sleep.
She responded by asking why he drinks coffee at midnight.
He didn’t have an answer.
She has also developed the alarming habit of beating me at pool.
“I think you’re cheating,” I tell her after she sinks the eight ball for the third game in a row.
She straightens from the table and rests the cue against one shoulder. She is tall enough to lean across the felt without climbing halfway onto it, although she has done that too when a shot required it.
“How?”
“I haven’t figured that out.”
“Convenient.”
“You spent six years locked in a house. When did you learn to play like this?”
“Viktor had a pool table.”
“And he let you use it?”
“No.”
She walks around the table and begins collecting the balls.
“But Ivan did.”
“Your guard?”
“He got tired of watching me read.”
Her expression changes when she says his name.
Not much. A brief sadness touches her dark eyes before she turns toward the table and hides it.
I file the reaction away with everything else I’ve learned about her.
“Another game?” she asks.
“You’ve already destroyed my dignity.”
“That isn’t a no.”
“It should be.”
She sets the balls inside the triangle.
I rack them properly for her.
It’s the least I can do.
#
Lucia doesn't win over the men by trying.
That’s probably why it happens so quickly.
Dario is first.
He spends most afternoons near the back of the house and develops a habit of stopping in the library when she’s there. He claims he’s checking the pool-terrace doors.
Those doors have never required that much attention.
One afternoon, Lucia catches him staring at the book in her hands.
“Have you read it?” she asks.
Dario looks embarrassed. On anyone else, the slight color rising beneath the scar near his eyebrow might go unnoticed. On Dario, it is practically a confession.
“No.”
“You were staring.”
“My niece likes those.”
Lucia turns the cover toward him.
“How old is she?”
“Fourteen.”
“Then she might like it.”
The following morning, I find Lucia searching the library shelves for the first book in the series. When she discovers we don’t have it, she asks Grace to order a copy.
Dario finds it waiting for him two days later with a note tucked inside.
For your niece. This one comes first.
He carries the book around for the rest of the afternoon as if someone has entrusted him with crown jewels.
Armando lasts slightly longer.
He is polite to Lucia from the beginning, but politeness isn’t affection. Armando is polite to people he intends to shoot.
What changes his mind is coffee.
He comes into the kitchen one afternoon while Lucia and Angela are making biscotti.
He has been on the phone for hours and looks as though he has personally argued with every contractor in Massachusetts.
His tie hangs loose, and the gray near his temples is standing up where he has repeatedly dragged a hand through his hair.
Lucia pours him a cup without asking.
Black, with one sugar.
He stops.
“How did you know?”
“You take the sugar packet from the tray every morning but never use the cream.”
Armando looks at me.
I lift both hands.
“I didn’t tell her.”
He takes the cup.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
After that, he begins bringing her newspapers whenever he returns from the city. Not just one. Every paper he can find, folded into a precise stack and left beside her place at breakfast.
He says she needs to understand what is happening outside the house.
Angela says he likes her.
Armando denies it.
No one believes him.
Bruno is the last.
Not because he dislikes Lucia. Bruno doesn’t like anyone until they’ve survived at least five years of his suspicion.
Then his granddaughter has a birthday.
He mentions it once over lunch, mostly to complain that the girl is turning thirteen and has announced she is too old for everything he understands how to buy.
The next day, Lucia finds him in the kitchen.
“What does she like?”
Bruno stares at her over the newspaper. Silver has nearly overtaken the dark hair at his temples, and his heavy eyebrows draw together whenever he suspects someone is interfering in his affairs.
“Who?”
“Your granddaughter.”
His suspicion deepens.
“Why?”
“Because you said you don’t know what to get her.”
“I’ll give her money.”
“She’ll think you forgot.”
“I didn’t forget.”
“I know that. But she won’t.”
Bruno looks at me as though I might remove Lucia from the conversation.
I take a bite of my sandwich.
“What does she like?” Lucia asks again.
“Drawing,” he mutters.
“What kind?”
“How many kinds are there?”
Lucia spends twenty minutes asking him questions he can’t answer. That afternoon, she helps him choose a leather sketchbook, a set of professional pencils, and a small silver charm shaped like a paintbrush.
His granddaughter calls him crying because it’s the best present anyone has ever given her.
The following morning, a box from the best bakery in Boston appears beside Lucia’s breakfast plate.
Bruno claims he had nothing to do with it.
He also threatens Dario when he reaches for one of the pastries.
Sunday dinner is the exception to everyone going home at the end of the day. Angela opens the table to the men who are off duty and any family members able to join them.
The formal dining room changes on Sundays. Serving bowls cover the table. Extra chairs appear from neighboring rooms. Children leave fingerprints on the windows and toys beneath the sideboard. Conversations overlap until no one can follow more than half of them.
Lucia remembers every name she is given.
She asks about school, jobs, and ailments mentioned only once. By the next Sunday, she knows who prefers sparkling water, which child won’t eat tomatoes, and who needs to leave early for work.
By the end of the third week, Lucia has accomplished something I didn’t believe possible.
Every man in the house is conspiring to spoil her.
She accepts the newspapers from Armando, asks about Dario’s niece, and saves half of the pastries for Bruno to take home.
She helps Angela in the kitchen despite being told not to. She thanks the guards when they open the gates, knows the names of the groundskeepers, and asks the housekeeper about her son’s new job.
She remembers things.
Not important things.
Human things.
Because Lucia spent six years being treated as though her own thoughts didn’t matter, she seems determined to make sure no one around her feels invisible.
Angela loves her.
The men adore her.
And I’m in serious trouble.
Marco is the only one who appears unaffected.
Appears being the key word.
I find them in our mother’s study most afternoons. Lucia sits behind the desk with her hair twisted into a loose knot and papers spread around her. She usually removes her shoes and tucks one foot beneath herself in the chair.
Marco occupies the seat beside her, leaning close enough to point out something in a letter or ledger. His jackets have gradually disappeared from these sessions. By the third week, he arrives with his sleeves already rolled up and coffee for both of them.
They have developed a language of their own.
Not the silent twin language Marco and I share.
Something quieter.