Chapter - Valentina Moretti
VALENTINA MORETTI
We took out Marta's furniture carefully.
The nonna had given her blessing—the room belongs to the living now, signora—but asked us to keep three things: the vanity, the silver crucifix, and the painting of the Madonna and Child. The rest we cleared out to make room for a crib that hadn't even arrived yet.
I was folding an old sheet when Luca stopped going through the wardrobe and looked at me.
"What?"
"Come here."
I went. He put his hand on my belly, and this time it wasn't just a gesture—you could feel the small curve, but it was there.
The first time you could see it, not just feel it.
"It's showing," he said, low.
I looked down. My belly, finally making a curve in the dress.
"It's showing," I repeated.
He knelt and kissed the curve over the fabric, resting his forehead there.
"Bella mia. Lie down with me."
We lay down on the old bed—Marta's, which was going too, along with the rest. Luca pulled me to his chest, his hand on my belly, and we stayed there, in the half-dismantled room, with the afternoon light coming in through the window he'd had opened.
His mouth found mine. He kissed me slowly, his hand moved up my waist, and I felt the desire rise with it, the way it always did—but this time there was no hurry to get anywhere.
And we just stayed there, wrapped up on the old bed in the room that was becoming a baby's room, talking quietly about nothing—about the crib, about the color of the wall, about whether it would be a boy or a girl.
The desire there, warm, with no urgency. For the first time it didn't have to turn into something else.
In the afternoon I went to the music room.
Donna Beatrice was there, taking the silk cloth off the piano, opening the windows that looked onto the garden.
"Signora."
"Beatrice."
She smoothed the lid of the piano with the cloth folded in three, in her way.
"It'll be good to have a child here," she said, not looking at me. "I took care of the padrone when he was a baby. I took care of Raffaele after Donna Marta died." She stopped. "I'll take care of this one too, if the signora lets me."
"I'd be honored, Beatrice."
She nodded once. She didn't say anything more—because she doesn't. But I saw her eyes shine for a second before she turned to close the window on the other side.
I sat down on the piano bench. I lifted the lid.
The nonna's words in my head, from Capri: play the whole Chopin. A woman who settles her accounts finishes the music.
I rested my fingers on the keys. I started Op. 9 No. 2. Mamma's nocturne.
The left hand first, the right coming in, the melody filling the room, going out through the open window, down to the garden where the old gardener was tending the grapevine.
I went far, farther than ever. I got close to the end—close to the last bar, to the place where I always stopped.
And I stopped. Again.
My hands locked. The knot in my throat.
Not today, not yet.
But I didn't shut the lid in anger, like the other times. I left my hand resting on the keys and took a deep breath.
Tomorrow, I thought. Tomorrow I play it all the way through. With the nonna here, with Matteo, with Luca. Tomorrow I finish the music.
I settled my accounts, Mamma. All that's left is to finish your music.