8
LUCA BELLANDI
I could have gone back to the office once they found the door. Carlo and Marco were there. No one needed me to inspect a staircase. I stayed beside Gabriela.
Carlo checked the first steps. Marco went with him as far as the bend, lighting the low ceiling. Gabriela wrote down the measurements they called out. I waited until Carlo came back and said we could go as far as the next landing.
“Only where Marco’s cleared it,” he warned. “We still need to check the rest.”
She picked up her bag with her phone, brush, and notebook inside. I took the other flashlight. I had to duck to get through the doorway.
She stopped on the third step.
“Gabriela?”
“Just a moment.”
Her hand tightened on the bag’s strap. The beam of her flashlight stayed fixed on the wall. I looked back. We could still see the open library door.
“We can go back.”
She nodded. I went up first and moved aside for her. Back in the library, she set the flashlight on a table with exaggerated care.
“Enclosed spaces?” I asked.
“Elevators.” She tried to smile. “Stairs too, apparently.”
I pulled out a chair. She sat and stared at the window. I got water from the crew’s table. When I came back, she was still taking short, shallow breaths.
“Want me to get someone?”
She shook her head. I stayed close without touching her. Gradually, her grip on the cup eased.
“The last time my father went into the hospital, we got stuck in the elevator during a power outage. Between floors,” she said. “He was the one on the stretcher. I was the one who couldn’t breathe.”
I remembered that admission. I’d got the news in a car and said I would call later.
“He tried to get me to count the buttons on the panel. I kept getting mixed up and starting again. When they got the door open, he was still counting with me.”
She sat up straighter. Any number of useless things came into my head. I said none of them.
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t.”
Carlo appeared in the doorway. Marco was checking the way out at the other end; it would take a few minutes. Gabriela said we’d wait in the library. Carlo went back into the passage, leaving the door open.
She took another sip. A drop ran down to her fingers. I offered her a tissue from the crew’s kit, and she took it with a small smile.
“You don’t have to watch over me.”
“I’m waiting to find out where the stairs go.”
“Of course.”
I sat on the edge of the table, far enough away to let her decide whether to keep talking. She opened her notebook. On the previous page was a drawing of a molding, surrounded by arrows and measurements.
“Was this always what you wanted to do?”
“Architecture?”
I nodded.
“When I was little, my father opened up a wall in Lisbon and found a newspaper they’d used to wedge the wood in place.
I wanted to keep it. He said we had to photograph it first and record where we’d found it.
I thought he was taking forever.” She smiled.
“The next day, I came back with a notebook. I still have it.”
“And the newspaper?”
“In the project archive. He wouldn’t give in.”
I thought of all the times I’d seen Augusto stop a meeting to look at something his daughter brought him. Back then, I’d usually checked my watch.
“What about you?” she asked. “Why hotels?”
“Money.”
“That’s the answer you give investors.”
I ran my thumb along the edge of the table. There was a deep, old gouge in the wood. I remembered it.
“In the first one, I knew where every key was. Which faucet leaked. How much was in the account. It wasn’t much, but I made the decisions.”
“My father said you wanted somewhere no one could make you leave.”
My thumb stopped on the wood.
“Augusto talked too much.”
“He told me your father sold your house after Elisabetta died.”
“I was eleven. I came home from school and some of the furniture was already gone.” I looked toward the window. “The Palazzo was my grandfather’s. I came here for vacations, weekends. My father sold our house in Milan.”
“Did you ever go back?”
“I bought it as soon as I could. Terrible deal. Paid twice what it was worth.”
“Did you live there?”
“Two nights.”
She closed the notebook. Didn’t ask why I’d left.
Carlo called from across the room. The stairs led to a landing and a small chamber beside the garden wall. Marco had reached the outside exit. The library’s upper gallery would stay closed off, but we could document that route.
Gabriela stood.
“I can do it tomorrow,” she said, looking at the narrow doorway.
“You can.”
She picked up the flashlight, tested the switch, and looked at me again.
“I want to go now. Just don’t get too far ahead.”
I went first. This time, she kept her light low, watching each step. At the bottom, I held out my hand. She kept hold until she reached the floor, then let go slowly.
The passage ran behind the bookshelves. Cobwebs stretched across the low ceiling. I brushed one aside with the flashlight.
“Romantic,” she murmured.
“Try not to seduce the spiders.”
“Jealous?”
I stopped. She nearly walked into my back.
“It was a joke.”
“I know.”
I went on into the chamber. A stone bench stood on one side. On the other, words had been scratched into the plaster. Gray morning light came through the low door Marco had opened.
“There’s an inscription,” she said.
She brushed off the dust. I recognized the slant of the letters before I could read the words.
“My mother’s handwriting. Her R always looked like a V.”
Le rose ricordano la strada. The roses remember the way.
Gabriela stepped back to let me see. There was an E beneath the words. I touched the plaster beside them, careful not to touch the letters.
“She used to hide notes in the garden,” I said. “When she got sick and couldn’t leave her room, she wrote clues. A coin, a piece of candy. Sometimes nothing. She said looking was part of the present.”
I remembered making my way through the flower beds with a folded note in my pocket. My mother waited at the window. I would raise my hand to show her what I’d found.
“I never saw this one.”
Gabriela lifted her phone, then paused.
“May I?”
I nodded. She took two pictures and lowered it.
I stayed a little longer. I didn’t remember the passage. Perhaps Elisabetta had written the words before our games began. There was no date. All I knew was that I’d recognized her hand.
“The way out’s here,” Marco called from the other side of the door. “Watch the root.”
She put the brush away, glanced once more at the inscription, then toward the light.
“It led to the roses.”
We emerged behind the ivy-covered pavilion. The rain had eased. Wild shrubs, mossy stones, and flower beds nearly lost to sight were all that remained of Elisabetta’s garden. I remembered the path between them. I took two steps and stopped at what was left of the stone edging.
Gabriela crouched and moved a branch aside. The outline of a bed appeared beneath the leaves. She didn’t tell me she could fix it, or ask whether I wanted her to. She took a photograph and stood.
Marco went to the gate to let Paola know. At the slippery stretch, I offered Gabriela my hand. She took it.
Once we were past the mud, I could have let go. I didn’t. She looked at our hands but left hers in mine.
We only let go when we reached the courtyard. She went back to the library with Marco to collect the plans. I stood looking at the garden entrance until Paola called my name a second time.