1. Nova #2
Not the foolish kind - I’m done with the foolish kind.
After the study, after his face turning to his wine instead of my wrist, I already know how this likely ends.
So I tell myself the truth as I buy them: this is a test, not a rescue.
One last, unmistakable chance for Dante to choose me - so that when I walk out for good, I’ll know I left nothing on the table, that I gave him every opportunity and he simply didn’t take it.
If he surprises me, maybe I misjudged that night.
If he doesn’t, then I have my answer, clean and final, and no part of me will ever lie awake wondering again.
The tickets are beautiful - thick cream paper, elegant typography, the name of a seaside village in the South of France that I’ve only ever seen in photographs.
I found it last month, buried in an article about hidden gems of the C?te d’Azur, and I thought: That’s where we should have gone. That’s the honeymoon we never took.
Because Vivienne had opinions about the honeymoon. Vivienne always has opinions. We went to a Castellani property in Lake Como instead, a stone villa full of her portrait and her taste and her lingering presence, and I spent two weeks wondering why I felt like a guest in my own marriage.
But this, these tickets, this is mine. Bought with the last money that’s truly mine, the scraps of my gallery earnings that somehow escaped the joint accounts and the prenuptial agreements and all the other ways the Castellanis have absorbed my life into theirs.
A fresh start, I think, turning the tickets over in my hands. We can talk. Really talk. Away from this house, away from her-
I rehearse the words all the way home, practicing the brightness in my voice, the hope in my smile. Surprise, darling. I’ve been planning this for weeks. Just the two of us, like it should have been from the beginning-
The house is quiet when I let myself in. Mid-afternoon, the staff in the back of the house, Vivienne at her weekly salon. I slip off my shoes and pad through the marble halls in stockinged feet, feeling almost giddy.
He’ll see the effort. He’ll understand. We can fix this-
The study door is cracked open.
I hear Dante’s voice first, and I almost call out to him - darling, I’m home early, I have something to show you - but then I hear the other voice, tinny and distant through a speaker.
His mother.
I stop.
“She’s becoming a problem, Dante. These accusations-”
“I know, Mamma.”
“She’s unstable. Making things up for attention. You saw her the other night, hysterical over nothing-”
“I know.”
I should walk away. I should close the door and pretend I never heard, should go upstairs and pack my hope into a suitcase along with everything else that doesn’t belong here.
But I don’t walk away. I stand frozen in the hallway, the tickets in my hands, and I listen to my husband agree with my abuser.
“The best thing you can do is distance yourself emotionally. Don’t engage when she makes these claims. She’ll tire herself out eventually.”
“You’re right, Mamma.”
“And if she doesn’t - well. We have options.”
“What kind of options?”
“Leave that to me, darling. I’ve handled difficult situations before.”
Dante laughs - the same warm, easy laugh I fell in love with at a gallery opening three years ago, back when I thought warmth was the same as goodness.
“I trust you, Mamma. You always know what’s best.”
“Of course I do. Now, about the Montague dinner next week-”
The conversation shifts, moves on, and I stand in the hallway with honeymoon tickets in my hands and the ruins of my marriage at my feet.
He didn’t hesitate.
Not even for a moment. Not even a flicker of doubt, a half-second of but what if she’s telling the truth - he just agreed. Folded himself neatly into his mother’s version of reality, where I’m the problem, I’m the hysteric, I’m the unstable wife who needs to be handled.
You’re right, Mamma. I can’t trust her anymore.
The words echo in my skull like a death knell.
I don’t gasp. I don’t cry. I don’t push open the door and scream and demand to be seen, to be believed, to be treated like something more than an inconvenient obstacle in the Castellani family’s pristine existence.
I’m done performing for people who refuse to watch.
Instead, I walk to the kitchen. My footsteps are silent on the marble, my breathing even, my heart a cold, steady drumbeat in my chest.
You’re right, Mamma.
I set the tickets on the counter. Perfectly square, aligned with the edge of the marble.
I can’t trust her anymore.
I slide off my wedding ring - the Castellani heirloom that Vivienne presented to me on my wedding day with a smile like a wound - and place it on top of the tickets. A paperweight. A period at the end of a sentence.
One suitcase. I allow myself one suitcase, packed in fifteen minutes, containing nothing that came from them.
The service stairs. The back door. The November evening swallowing me whole.
The last thing I see before I step into the night is the kitchen window, golden light spilling out across the gravel drive. Somewhere in the house behind me, my husband is still on the phone with his mother, agreeing with her, trusting her, choosing her.
He has no idea I’m already gone.
Let him find the ring, I think, and I close the door behind me without looking back. Let him wonder if I’ll come crawling back.
I won’t.
***
Behind me, in the study, I know Dante is still laughing at something his mother says, still reaching for his whiskey - utterly unaware that the silence he asked for has finally, permanently arrived.