17. Antonio
— ? —
Antonio
The Acardi family celebrates name days.
I know this because Cassandra mentioned it offhandedly yesterday, and I immediately panicked and spent an hour researching appropriate gifts before realizing that her mother’s name day is today, which means I have about six hours to figure out how to not completely embarrass myself at a family gathering I was only invited to because Cassandra took pity on me.
Twelve weeks. That’s how far along she is now - six weeks since the diagnosis, twelve weeks of gestation, which means we’re just past the point where the risk of complications drops significantly. I’ve read too many pregnancy books in the past month.
“It’s not a formal thing,” she said when she extended the invitation this morning. “Just dinner with my parents. They do it every year.”
“And you’re sure they want me there?”
“My mother specifically asked if you’d be joining us.”
“That doesn’t mean she wants me there. That might mean she’s being polite.”
“Antonio.” Cassandra almost smiled - almost. “If my mother didn’t want you there, she wouldn’t have asked. Trust me.”
So here I am, standing in the Acardi kitchen at seven in the evening, holding a bottle of wine I’m not sure is appropriate and trying not to look as out of place as I feel.
Marta Acardi is directing traffic like a general commanding troops. Carlo is stationed at the stove, stirring something that smells incredible. Cassandra is setting the table, and I’m-
“Antonio.” Carlo’s voice cuts through my uncertainty. “Come here. I need another set of hands.”
I set down the wine and cross to the stove, where Carlo hands me a wooden spoon without ceremony.
“Stir this. Don’t let it stick to the bottom.”
“What is it?”
“Ragù. My grandmother’s recipe. Three generations of Acardis have ruined it by not stirring enough, so don’t be the fourth.”
“I’m not technically an Acardi.”
“You’re married to one. Close enough.” He moves to the counter and starts chopping herbs with practiced efficiency. “How’s the sauce looking?”
I peer into the pot. “Dark? Kind of… thick?”
“That’s good. Keep stirring.”
We work in silence for a few minutes, the rhythm of the kitchen settling around us.
Marta is arranging flowers on the table.
Cassandra is folding napkins with the precise attention she brings to everything.
And I’m standing at the stove, stirring ragù, feeling like I’ve stumbled into someone else’s life.
“You know,” Carlo says conversationally, “when Cassandra first told us about you, I had my doubts.”
“I imagine you did.”
“Famous actor, international career, probably has women throwing themselves at him constantly.” He shrugs. “Not what I pictured for my daughter.”
“What did you picture?”
“Someone steady. Reliable. A man who comes home at the end of the day and stays there.”
The words land exactly where they’re meant to. I keep stirring.
“I wasn’t that man,” I say. “I should have been, but I wasn’t.”
“No.” Carlo scrapes his herbs into a small bowl. “You weren’t. But you’re here now, stirring my grandmother’s ragù, and my daughter tells me you’ve been helping at her shop every day for five weeks. So maybe you’re learning.”
“I’m trying.”
“That’s all anyone can do.” He claps me on the shoulder - brief, almost casual, the way a father might with his own son. “Keep stirring. Another ten minutes and we can take it off the heat.”
***
Dinner is easier than I expected.
The food is incredible - the ragù, fresh pasta, vegetables from Marta’s garden, bread that’s still warm from the oven.
The conversation flows around me, family stories and local gossip and gentle teasing that includes me without demanding my participation.
Marta asks about the atelier. Carlo tells a story about a neighbor’s escaped goat.
Cassandra laughs at something her mother says, a real laugh that I haven’t heard in months.
This is what family looks like, I think. This is what I always wanted and never knew how to build.
After dinner, I help Carlo wash dishes while the women have coffee in the sitting room. We work in companionable silence, him washing and me drying, the rhythm of it soothing in a way I don’t expect.
“There’s a box in the car,” I say eventually. “Things I brought from Rome. Cassandra said I could keep it at the rental, but some of it… I thought she might want it here.”
“What kind of things?”
“Personal items. Photos. Things that used to be in our bedroom.”
Carlo nods slowly. “Bring it in. You can go through it in the spare room, see what she wants to keep.”
The box is heavier than I remember. I carry it inside and up the stairs to the small room at the end of the hall - a guest room that’s become a temporary storage space, full of Cassandra’s things from the villa.
I set the box on the bed and open it, sorting through the contents. Photo albums. A jewelry box. Some books she’d been reading before she left. And at the bottom, wrapped in tissue paper-
I stop.
The plush toy is small and worn, a stuffed rabbit with floppy ears and a missing button eye.
We bought it at a street market in Florence, the weekend we started trying.
I made a joke about it being practice for the nursery, and Cassandra laughed and tucked it into her bag, and I forgot about it until now.
But she didn’t throw it away. She kept it, this small hopeful thing, through two years of failure and grief and silence.
I pick it up and hold it, feeling the soft fabric against my palms.
The trying broke us. I understand that now, in a way I couldn’t while it was happening.
Every negative test was a small death, a hope extinguished, and instead of grieving together, we grieved apart.
She carried the weight of a body that wouldn’t cooperate.
I buried myself in work because I didn’t know what else to do.
I didn’t know how to say: I’m scared. I feel like a failure. I don’t know how to help you and it’s killing me.
I didn’t know how to say any of it. So I said nothing, and the nothing grew until it filled all the space between us.
Downstairs, I hear laughter - Cassandra and her mother, their voices carrying up through the old house. I should put the rabbit back in the box. I should finish sorting through these things and go back downstairs and be the helpful guest Carlo seems willing to let me become.
But I can’t move. I’m sitting on a guest room bed, holding a one-eyed rabbit, and the grief I’ve been carrying for two years is finally surfacing - rising up through my chest like water through a cracked foundation.
Voices drift up from below - clearer now, coming from the room directly under this one. Cassandra, and then another voice on speaker, tinny but recognizable. Odette, calling from Milan.
I should close the door. Give them privacy.
But then I hear my name.
“-Antonio never noticed when I stopped wearing color. Did you know that?” Cassandra’s voice, tired and raw.
“I used to wear red all the time. Bright colors, bold patterns. And then after the second year of trying, I just… stopped. Started wearing neutrals. Grays and blacks and beiges. Like I was trying to disappear into the background of my own life.”
“Did he ever say anything?”
“He didn’t even see it. I could have dyed my hair purple and I’m not sure he would have noticed. I felt like a ghost in my own house, Odi. Like I was fading out of existence and no one could see it happening.”
I should close the door. I should stop listening. But I can’t move, can’t breathe, because she’s saying the thing I was too blind to see - the way she vanished inch by inch while I was busy being someone else.
“The worst part wasn’t that he was gone,” Cassandra continues.
“The worst part was that when he was there, he still wasn’t there.
He’d be sitting across from me at dinner and I’d look at his face and know he was thinking about the film, or the next project, or anything except me.
I could have been anyone. I could have been no one. ”
A pause. When she speaks again, her voice is barely above a whisper.
“I could have been no one at all, and he wouldn’t have noticed until the house was empty.”