CHAPTER 4
"Red isn't the color of a bride or a widow. It's the color of a woman who decided to be neither."
VALENTINA ROSSI
The seamstress arrived Wednesday morning, and Donna Beatrice came with her.
Donna Beatrice had been the Morettis' housekeeper for thirty-two years.
She had white hair scraped back into a steel-hard bun, small black eyes, and a way of walking into a room that made the walls step back out of respect.
She came into my room without knocking and took the measure of the room before she took the measure of me.
"Stand up," she said.
"Good morning to you too."
"Arms. Up."
The seamstress—a small woman named Lina, pins held in her mouth—started running the tape measure across my bust. Donna Beatrice watched, hands folded in front of her black apron.
"Waist, sixty-three," Lina murmured.
"Sixty-four," I corrected.
"Sixty-three," Lina repeated, without looking at me.
Donna Beatrice took a step forward.
"You have two dinners this week, signorina. Wednesday night, the reception for the Colombo cousins. Friday night, the official engagement. Your father arrives from Palermo at six."
I looked at her in the mirror.
"My father's really coming?"
"Yes."
I swallowed hard. Lina pinned my dress and pricked me by accident, but I didn't move.
"And who else?"
"Close family. The padrone's brother, the consigliere Don Acquaviva, three associates from Rome, and Signora Varga."
"Signora who?"
Donna Beatrice looked at me in the mirror, but those small black eyes didn't blink.
"Bianca Varga. An old friend of the family."
There were certain phrases that walked into a room dressed as one thing and turned out to be another.
An old friend of the family was one of those.
Donna Beatrice said it exactly the way a sixty-year-old woman who'd served three generations of a family would talk about a mistress—with a professional respect that hid nothing.
"An old friend is coming to my engagement dinner."
"Signora Varga comes to every important family dinner, signorina."
"Capisco."
I ate lunch alone in the breakfast room.
I ate half and pushed the rest away. I'd asked for a simple tray—bread, buffalo mozzarella, tomato, a glass of white wine—because my stomach had been in knots since the vineyard, Monday.
I hadn't seen Luca since that morning before dawn.
Three days.
He'd vanished—meetings, according to Raffaele. I knew what was going on; it was what I'd have done too: promise an important answer and then disappear to buy time until the right moment.
I was on my third sip of wine when I heard footsteps behind me.
"Eating alone like a widow, cognatina?"
Raffaele.
He came into the room already unbuttoning his jacket, tossing it over the chair next to mine like a man who lived there. Then he sat down, picked up my wineglass, and drank from it without asking, handing it back empty.
"Do you drink everyone's wine, or just mine?"
"Just yours. The rest I have to pay for."
"How romantic."
He laughed. Then he picked up the bottle from the tray and filled two glasses—mine and a fresh one for himself.
"Has Donna Beatrice told you about Friday's dinner yet?"
"She has."
"And about Bianca?"
I looked at him over the rim of the glass.
"She did. Said she was an old friend of the family."
"Donna Beatrice is diplomatic."
"And you?"
"I'm the brother. I can afford the luxury." He took a sip. "Bianca was my brother's woman for seven years. They never married, but she was his."
"Does she know I exist?"
"Of course."
"Does she know I'm having dinner with you on Friday?"
"Yes."
"And she's coming anyway?"
"She insisted on coming."
I set down the glass, looking at Raffaele more closely.
"Why are you warning me?"
He looked at me, for the first time without the crooked smile. The version of him I hadn't seen yet—the sottocapo version, the one who does the work his brother can't do in public.
"Because my brother won't warn you."
"Why not?"
"Because Luca thinks a forewarned woman prepares herself, and he doesn't want you prepared."
"What does he want?"
Raffaele drank and smiled again. The charming version came back full force.
"He wants to see how you react. He's been watching you for four days, cognatina. He doesn't say so, but he watches."
"And what do you get out of warning me?"
Raffaele set down his glass and tilted his head.
"I get out of burying a bride," he said, the smile still showing. "And my brother wouldn't thank me if I let Bianca humiliate you at your first dinner."
"What brotherly kindness."
"Sì. I'm a complicated man." He stood and grabbed his jacket. "Oh, and cognatina..."
"I'm listening."
"The north side won't work next time."
I looked up.
"Come again?"
He tapped lightly on the door frame on his way out.
"I had the wall reinforced yesterday. Sorry."
He walked out laughing, and I sat looking at the empty chair where he'd been sitting.
Raffaele knew about the escape and the north wall. Either he'd seen it, or Luca had told him. And I couldn't decide which of the two was worse.
I called Francesca at eleven at night.
"Bella, do you know what time it is?"
"You never slept before two in Palermo, Fra. Don't give me that."
"I've changed. I'm a new woman. I go to bed with the Madonna at ten." I heard her lighting a cigarette. "Tell me everything."
I told her about the vineyard and the ankle. I told her about the touch on my elbow too, and I explained a little about the people around me, including Raffaele and Bianca.
She listened in silence. When I finished, she took a long drag.
"Gesù Cristo. You got promoted from bride to soap-opera heroine in three days."
"Fra, help me."
"Allora. Let's take it one piece at a time. First: the photo."
"I know."
"You need to find out when the photo was taken. What year. Where. Who else was there."
"How?"
"Is their nonna still alive?"
"The mother's dead, but the paternal nonna is alive. She lives on Capri and she's coming to the wedding."
"Can you get to her before the wedding?"
"Maybe."
"Old Catholic women love telling the things their children don't want told. Second: Bianca."
"What about her?"
"She's going to test you on Friday. She's going to test you in front of your father, the consigliere, and the whole family. You already know that."
"I know."
"Bella, listen." She stopped mid-drag. "You can't hit back."
"What do you mean, I can't hit back?"
"If you hit back, you confirm exactly what she wants to confirm—that you're an insecure girl. You don't hit back, you answer. There's a big difference."
"Fra…"
"You're Valentina Rossi. You spent five years in a convent listening to the Mother Superior tell you that a good woman doesn't answer back. You can answer in your sleep."
I laughed.
"You should write a book."
"I should've been a lawyer. Third: Luca."
"No..."
"Bella."
"No."
"Bella." She paused. "Did you feel something when he took your elbow?"
I stayed quiet, staring at the ceiling.
"Fra..."
"No. Listen," she said slowly. "You don't have to suppress it, amore. You just have to hold off on deciding. Feeling something isn't the same as being something. You feel it, you note it, and you move on."
"Okay."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"And open my letter before Friday."
"Why?"
"Because I said so, and because I know you."
Friday, seven in the evening.
I came down the marble staircase in a wine-red dress Lina had finished altering two hours earlier—long, bare shoulders, low back, a slit up the side of the skirt that stopped a millimeter short of indecent. Because if Bianca was coming dressed for war, I wasn't going to show up in a school uniform.
The Morettis' dining room stood open—a forty-foot table set for sixteen, crystal candelabra with the candles already lit, antique silver, crystal glasses in four sizes per guest, white flowers with a scent that filled the room.
Two soldiers at the door, black suits, hands folded. A white-gloved ma?tre d'.
I stopped in the doorway and looked in.
Salvatore Rossi, my father, stood talking with an older man—bald, short, round glasses—who had to be the consigliere Acquaviva. My father turned when I came in, and his eyes traveled down the dress. His mouth didn't move; he didn't even greet me.
Raffaele came toward me first.
"Cognatina." He kissed my hand. "You're dangerous tonight."
"That was the plan."
"It worked."
"Where's your brother?"
"Behind you."
I didn't turn around right away. I waited half a second and breathed, and then I turned.
Luca stood ten feet away. Black tuxedo, perfect, bow tie, his hair combed for the first time since I'd known him. The scar in his eyebrow catching the candlelight. And beside him, her arm coiled around his like a snake that knows its tree—Bianca Varga.
Platinum blonde, in a silver dress. Thirty-five, maybe.
Beautiful in a dangerous way, the way of a woman who'd grown up as the most beautiful one in the room and had never gotten used to losing the title.
She saw me and smiled, slowly letting go of Luca's arm, like someone making a point of showing she can let go but doesn't have to.
And she came toward me.
"Tu sei lei!" A soprano voice, a Roman accent. Her hands on mine before I had time not to give them. She kissed both my cheeks. "Madonna, how beautiful! Luca didn't tell me the bride was just a girl."
I smiled at her the way I'd learned from the Mother Superior.
"Signora Varga. A pleasure."
"Oh, Bianca, please. In a family home we don't bother with surnames." She looked me up and down, openly. "What a daring dress. Didn't your mother teach you what to wear to a first dinner?"
Behind her, I heard Raffaele cough out a laugh.
I looked at Bianca and smiled a little wider.
"My mother died when I was thirteen, Bianca," I said slowly, with all the sweetness in the world. "She didn't get the chance to teach me much, but I think she'd have chosen this dress too, you know? Young women can allow themselves certain things."
Her mouth closed a half millimeter.
"Right," she said.
"You look beautiful too," I went on, in the same tone. "Silver-gray is a very brave color for someone past thirty. It's hard to pull off, but you're managing."
Silence.
Behind her, Raffaele's laugh turned into a real cough.
Bianca let go of my hands and stepped back.
"How sweet," she said, her voice lower.
"Thank you."
She turned to Luca.
"Caro, shall we sit?"
Luca didn't answer and looked straight at me.
"Valentina. Come with me."
And then he held out his arm.
I looked at his arm. I looked at my father across the room, who was watching me now—who had seen the whole scene. I looked at Bianca, frozen half a step back. I looked back at Luca.
Even so, I put my hand on his arm.
"Andiamo," I said.
He led me across the room to my place at the table, to his right, at the head. We walked in silence, and when he pulled out my chair, he lowered his head a fraction near my ear and said, low enough that no one else could hear:
"Brava."
It was the first word he'd said to me in four days. And I hated, so much, that it warmed something in me that should have stayed cold.