21
GAbrIELA DUARTE
I hadn’t set foot in my father’s old office in seven months, since moving the remaining staff into two smaller rooms and leaving behind the archives and furniture that wouldn’t fit.
Even so, when I opened the door, I expected the smell of fresh coffee and Augusto complaining that someone had moved his mechanical pencils. Instead, I found dust, closed windows, and the silence of a place that had outlived the man it was built for. Luca stayed behind me, giving me a moment.
“We can come back later,” he said.
“No. We need to get the records to Como before we finalize the documentation for the passage.”
I switched on the lights. Half the bulbs didn’t work.
The office occupied the second floor of an old building in Chiado, with blue tiles at the entrance and windows overlooking a sloping street.
Augusto had rented the first room before I was born and bought the entire floor after his early projects took off.
Now it would be sold to cover some of the debts.
I’d spent weeks pretending it was just a transaction. Once the loans secured against the property were paid off, the sale would give the firm some breathing room. It wouldn’t clear all the debts. Still, I’d gone over the figures again and again, trying to find enough room to hire someone back.
Handing over the keys would mean erasing the address Augusto had written on business cards, proposals, and envelopes for thirty years.
Even in recent months, I’d used photographs of that office in the firm’s presentations.
I couldn’t bring myself to replace them with the two narrow windows of our rented space.
People said memories didn’t depend on buildings when they weren’t the ones emptying the drawers.
Empty boxes stood stacked against the walls.
Cris had left labels, tape, and a list of documents to take to Italy.
The rest would go into a smaller storage unit.
Luca walked over to a child-sized desk in a corner.
“Was this yours?”
“My father had the legs cut down on an old drafting table. I spent my afternoons here after school.”
Paint still marked the wood, along with a crooked house outlined in pencil.
“You’ve been drawing houses since you were little.”
“I drew palaces. My father explained why they’d fall down.”
Luca traced a line with his finger.
“He kept it.”
“He kept everything I made. Even the terrible things.”
I opened a cabinet and took out old folders.
We’d come to Lisbon to find the original surveys of the Palazzo delle Rose that Augusto had carried out decades earlier.
The drawings Luca had brought from the family’s collection showed the library layout, but the passage’s dimensions and notes were missing.
I hoped to find them in my father’s archives.
Luca took off his jacket and began helping.
We worked for an hour. I sorted by year and project while he packed documents. The sounds of boxes, questions, and recollections eased some of the sadness in the room.
“Found you,” Luca said.
He held a photograph of me at nine, wearing an oversized hard hat and sticking my tongue out at the camera.
“Give it back.”
“It’s a historical record.”
“It’s blackmail material.”
“That too.”
He slipped it into his shirt pocket.
“Thief.”
“The original owner can’t complain.”
“I’m the original owner.”
“You’re the subject, not the owner.”
I reached for his pocket. He caught me around the waist and sat me on a desk. I laughed, forgetting for a few seconds where we were.
“Give it back.”
“Make me an offer.”
“One kiss.”
“Too low.”
“Two.”
“Done.”
I kissed him once, slowly. On the second kiss, his hand cupped the back of my neck, extending the agreement until I forgot the photograph. When we drew apart, he stayed between my knees.
“Augusto used to sit here,” I said.
Luca stepped back at once. I burst out laughing.
“That’s not funny.”
“A little.”
“Your father would haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“He’d complain about the desk, not about me.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. But I’m not asking anymore.”
Luca gave back the photograph. I put it in a box of personal things.
Among the Italian project files, we finally found a folder bearing the Palazzo’s name.
Inside were plans, photographs, pigment samples, and Augusto’s notes.
On a garden drawing, a dotted line connected the library to the secret pavilion.
“He knew about the passage,” I said.
Luca studied the margin.
“Look at this.”
Augusto had noted in the margin that Elisabetta had asked for the concealed entrance to be preserved. Beneath it, in a different ink, he’d added, “Sofia says Luca still comes to the garden looking for his mother.” The second note was dated after her death. I read it again.
“My father knew your mother?”
“Briefly. Augusto visited the palace before the main restoration.”
“He knew you ran away to the garden.”
Luca closed the folder.
“It seems everyone knew.”
“Didn’t anyone talk to you about it?”
“Sofia tried. I told her I just wanted to play outside.”
I touched his hand.
“Maybe you understand now.”
He laced his fingers through mine but didn’t answer. At noon, Cris arrived with sandwiches and three coffees. Christofer Sampaio was tall, with wavy brown hair and an easy smile. He hugged me tightly, lifting me a few inches off the floor.
“Gabi, you’ve lost weight.”
“You always say that.”
“Because you always work too hard.”
He kissed my forehead, then noticed Luca.
“Mr. Bellandi.”
“Christofer.”
The handshake was polite and far too firm. I looked from one to the other.
“Don’t start.”
“I haven’t started anything,” they said together.
Cris handed me the right coffee without asking and offered another to Luca.
“No sugar,” he said. “Paola told me.”
Luca took the cup.
“You seem to talk to Paola quite a bit.”
“Only about the studio. And how to keep Gabriela from forgetting to eat.”
“You’d need a bigger team for that.”
“At last, something we agree on.”
I unwrapped the sandwiches before the meeting turned into a contest. Over lunch, Cris brought me up to date on the office.
Two clients had delayed their payments, the bank had refused another extension, and the prospective buyer wanted to close in less than a month.
My lawyer was still reviewing the offer; I hadn’t signed the sale agreement.
“I can talk to the bank,” Luca said.
“No,” I replied.
Cris watched us.
“Does he always try to solve everything with money?”
“Always.”
“It works most of the time,” Luca said.
“Not with her.”
“I’ve noticed.”
There was cautious respect beneath the teasing. Cris wasn’t impressed by Luca’s fortune, but he wasn’t trying to challenge him for no reason either. That should have reassured me.
Instead, I realized my friend was studying me, noticing every glance and every silence between us. When Luca went out to take a call, Cris closed the door.
“You’re sleeping with him.”
I nearly spilled my coffee.
“Keep your voice down.”
“So you are.”
“It’s none of your business.”
“It’s absolutely my business when it’s the man who abandoned your father in the last months of his life.”
“He knows he was wrong. We’ve talked about it.”
“I still remember you waiting for him to show up.”
I took a deep breath.
“I don’t want to argue about this.”
“Does he treat you well?”
“Yes.”
“Is he open about the two of you?”
“Sofia and Paola know. So does the team overseeing my contract. He doesn’t want to talk to the press, and I’m still finding out just how far that discretion goes.”
Cris closed his eyes.
“Gabi.”
“Don’t.”
“You waited a long time for him, Gabi. Just don’t let all that waiting make you accept things that hurt you now.”
“I’m not seventeen anymore.”
“Then tell me why you’re speaking so quietly. Luca’s right outside the door.”
I sat on a box.
“Do you feel something more than friendship?”
Cris looked down at his hands.
“What I feel isn’t the point right now.”
“Cris.”
“I love you. Maybe in more than one way sometimes. But I’ve never used that to demand you choose me. And I’m not going to start when you’re looking at him as though you’ve finally been given something you’ve waited your whole life for.”
Tenderness came with a pang of guilt.
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t apologize for being in love with someone else. I’m just asking you to be careful.”
“And I need you to stay my friend, even if you don’t like my choice.”
He took the warning without offense.
“That’s not in question, Gabi.”
I squeezed his hand. He brushed a breadcrumb from my sleeve, as though he needed something to do with his fingers.
“He’s trying.”
“I hope he keeps trying.”
Luca returned, ending the conversation. That afternoon, we carried the boxes destined for storage to the car. Those for the Palazzo were labeled for the shipping company. I lingered, touching the drafting tables and my father’s desk. The shelves were almost empty.
“You’ll miss it,” Luca said.
“I already do.”
“You don’t have to sell.”
“Yes, I do.”
“You could rent it out.”
“The interest won’t wait for tenants.”
He looked around.
“How long until the sale?”
“Three weeks, if nothing holds it up.”
“And then?”
“Then someone will turn it into expensive apartments and say they preserved the facade.”
I switched off the lights.
“Places come to an end too, Luca. You can’t restore everything.”
He caught my hand before I closed the door.
“Maybe the buyer would agree to preserve some of it.”
“Don’t start.”
“I haven’t said anything.”
“I know that look. You’re calculating.”
“I’m always calculating.”
I locked the door and kissed him on the stairs, away from the windows.
That night at the hotel, I kept talking about the office until sleep overtook me. When I woke briefly, Luca was in the armchair with his phone in his hand. The screen went dark before I could read anything.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Work.”
“You promised to talk to me before making any decision that affects me.”
“I remember.”
His voice was calm, but he hadn’t answered the question. He held out his hand, and I curled against him, too tired to press.
The next morning, I set the photograph of Augusto I’d taken from my personal box beside the coffee. My lawyer had forwarded a revised offer: another company wanted to buy the floor for the same price and would allow more time to remove the archives. I read the terms on my phone before replying.
“I’ve asked my lawyer to review the new offer,” I said. “If there’s any arrangement about the archives, I want to consider it myself. You don’t need to get your lawyers involved.”
Luca kept his eyes on his cup.
“Understood.”
“I don’t want you saving the building for me.”
“What if there’s a way to preserve it all?”
“I want to know what that is before you decide for me.”
My phone vibrated. Cris was confirming the collection of the Palazzo boxes and asking when we’d pick up my last box of personal things.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you know exactly what you want.”
“It took me a long time to learn.”
He kissed my forehead and changed the subject. After breakfast, I collected the box and stopped at my lawyer’s office to sign the sale agreement. Luca waited in the car. I’d checked the price, the deadline, and the expenses; I didn’t know who was behind the company buying it.