10. Laney
LANEY
Professor Benedetti's office smelled like old books and espresso.
I stood in the doorway with Nate beside me, my stomach doing flips.
The last time I had been here I was twenty-three and presenting my thesis proposal, and I remembered feeling invincible back then, like the whole world was waiting for me to excavate it.
That girl felt like someone else now.
"Laney." Professor Benedetti looked up from his desk and smiled, the kind of smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. "Come in, both of you."
I stepped inside and sat in one of the worn leather chairs facing the professor's desk.
I folded my hands in my lap to keep them from shaking.
The office looked exactly the same as it had ten years ago, right down to the chipped mug on his desk and the framed map of Pompeii on the wall behind him.
I wondered if he remembered me at all, or if I was just another student who had walked away.
Professor Benedetti smiled at Nate. "Good to see you again, Nate. Still in Sicily?"
"For another few weeks," Nate said. "The Agrigento work is wrapping up."
"Excellent. And you brought Laney to me. I'm glad."
The professor settled back into his chair. He looked at me over his reading glasses, and I felt like I was twenty-three again, sitting here with my whole future in front of me. Except now my future was behind me, and I was trying to dig it back up. "So. You want to come back."
"Yes." My voice came out thin and embarrassing, and I cleared my throat. God, I sounded ridiculous. "I know it's been a long time."
"Ten years," he said mildly.
Like an idiot, I flushed all the way to my hairline. "Ten years. Yes."
"Tell me what you've been working on." He folded his hands on the desk and waited, patient as ever, and I remembered that about him now. He never rushed. He just waited until you were ready to talk.
I swallowed hard. My throat was tight, and my pulse was hammering so loud I thought he could probably hear it.
I made myself breathe and started talking.
"I've been running a dig on the Lombardo estate in Sicily.
It's a Roman site, late Republican period.
I've traced the family line back to the first century using ceramics, grave markers, and construction records.
The site ties directly to the name, to the land they still hold today. "
Professor Benedetti leaned forward, his elbows on the desk. "You've published?"
"No." I wanted to sink through the floor and disappear. The shame burned in my chest, hot and awful. "The family didn't want the attention. They're private people."
His eyebrows went up slightly, but he did not say anything. He just watched me with that same patient expression, waiting for me to keep going.
I did. My words tumbled out faster than I meant them to, like I was trying to prove something to him or maybe to myself.
"I have the work documented. All of it. I have my field notes, all my photographs, the cataloging system I built from scratch.
I have three papers ready to submit if I can get institutional backing again.
One on funerary practices, one on ceramic trade routes, and one on the continuity of land ownership from the Roman period to the present day. "
"And why now?" Professor Benedetti asked quietly.
I hesitated. Nate shifted in his chair beside me, but he did not jump in to answer for me or fill the silence.
I was grateful for that. I looked at the professor and told him the truth, the real truth I had not said out loud to anyone until this moment.
"Because I need my name on my work. I need to be more than just someone's wife or someone's mother. I need to be a person again."
He studied me for a long moment, and I felt like I was being excavated, like he could see all the layers of me I had buried over the last ten years.
The young woman who had believed she could have everything.
The wife who had convinced herself that being unseen was the price she paid for love.
The mother who had poured all her ambition into a daughter and a dig nobody cared about.
Finally he nodded, slow and deliberate. "All right. I'll write the letter."
The relief hit me like a wave, sudden and overwhelming, and I had to grip the edge of the chair to keep from shaking apart. My eyes stung, and I blinked hard to keep from crying in his office like a child. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
"But I need to know what to emphasize," Professor Benedetti said. He pulled a legal pad toward him and uncapped a fountain pen, the old-fashioned kind he had always used. "What positions are you applying for? What institutions?"
"Adjunct positions to start," I said. My voice was steadier now, and I felt like I could breathe again. "Anything that gets me back in the field with a university name behind me. I don't care where. I'll go anywhere."
He made a note, his handwriting small and precise. "And your area of focus? I know what it was, but ten years is a long time. People change direction."
"Roman provincial archaeology," I said. The words came easier now, like I was remembering who I used to be. "Family lineages in Sicily and southern Italy. Material culture and identity. How families use physical objects and spaces to construct continuity across generations."
"Good." He wrote that down too, nodding to himself. "That's strong. Very strong. References besides me?"
I gave him two names from my graduate program, people I had not spoken to in years but who might remember me.
He asked me about my thesis work, about the dig, about what equipment I had access to and what my timeline looked like.
We talked through the particulars for another fifteen minutes, and the whole time I felt like I was rebuilding something that had been buried for too long.
My stomach settled. My hands stopped shaking.
I could feel the person I used to be coming back to the surface, brushing the dirt off herself and standing up.
When Professor Benedetti finally set down his pen, he looked at me with something that might have been approval or maybe just recognition. "I'll have this to you by the end of the week. I'll send it to your email and copy you on any submissions you want me to make directly."
"Thank you," I said again. I meant it with everything I had left in me.
He smiled, small and warm. "You were a good student, Laney. I'm glad you're coming back."
Nate and I walked out of the building into the Roman sunlight, and I felt lighter than I had in months, maybe years.
The street was busy with tourists and students, people laughing and talking in half a dozen languages, and the noise felt good.
It felt like life happening all around me instead of passing me by.
"You did great in there," Nate said.
I shook my head. "I sounded like a mess."
"You sounded honest." He steered us toward a café across the piazza, weaving through a group of tourists taking photographs. "Come on. Let's get coffee. You look like you need it."
"I need a drink, not coffee."
He laughed. "It's two in the afternoon, Laney."
"Your point?"
We sat outside under a faded green umbrella, and Nate ordered us both espresso and a plate of biscotti that neither of us was going to eat.
When the server left, he looked at me across the little table and asked the question I knew was coming.
"So what happened? You said you'd tell me when we got here. "
I stirred sugar into my espresso even though I did not need to. The spoon clinked against the little porcelain cup, too loud in my own ears. I set it down carefully and made myself look at him. "It was Massimo's father's birthday. A big family dinner at the palazzo."
"Okay."
"His mother made a speech." The words tasted bitter, and I had to force them out past the tightness in my throat. "In front of everyone. About how the family needs a son to carry the name forward. Sofia is a treasure, she said, but not enough."
Nate's jaw tightened, but he did not say anything. He just waited for me to keep going.
"There's a woman. Vittoria," I said. My chest ached just remembering it. "She was there at the dinner. Touching him. His shoulders, his arm. Like she had the right to."
"Jesus, Laney."
"And he just let her," I said. The humiliation burned fresh, hot and awful. "He stood there and let her touch him like I wasn't even in the room. Costanza had made that speech about sons and the family's future, and Vittoria just stood there looking at me like I was already gone."
Nate shook his head slowly. His hand was flat on the table between us, and I thought for a second he might reach for mine, but he did not. He just kept his distance and let me talk. "That's unforgivable."
"I don't know." I wrapped my hands around the tiny espresso cup even though it was too hot and burned my palms. "I just know it hurt. God, it hurt so much I couldn't breathe."
"What did Massimo do?"
That was the question I had been dreading. I looked down at my cup and made myself say it. "Nothing. He didn't say anything. He just stood there and let his mother talk about me like I wasn't even there, like I was a piece of furniture she was discussing replacing."
"Laney—"
"He didn't defend me," I said, and my voice cracked on the words. "Not once. Not when his mother made that speech. Not when Vittoria touched him right in front of me."
Nate was quiet for a long moment. He did not tell me what to do.
He did not diagnose my marriage or explain Massimo's behavior or try to fix anything.
He just sat there across from me and listened, and that was what I needed more than anything else.
Someone who would just let me say it out loud without telling me what it meant.
I realized I had never talked about my marriage like this before.
Not to anyone. Not even to myself, really.
I had spent ten years convincing myself that being unseen was the price I paid for marrying into a family like his, that it was what love cost when the stakes were this high.
And now I was saying it out loud to someone who thought it was wrong, and the words felt dangerous. They felt like betrayal.
But they also felt true.
"I still love him," I said quietly.
Nate leaned back in his chair and looked at me with something that might have been sadness. "I know."
"I don't want to leave," I said, and I needed him to understand that.
"I don't want to walk away from my marriage or my life or my daughter.
I just want him to see me. I want him to be proud of the work I do, not just proud that I gave him a daughter.
I want a marriage where I'm not invisible, where he stands up for me when his family comes after me, where I matter for who I am and not just for what I gave him. "
Nate was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "That's not asking too much, Laney. That's the bare minimum."
"It feels like too much."
"It's not." His voice was firm, and I looked up at him. He met my eyes and held them. "You deserve that. You've always deserved that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you or to themselves."
I did not know what to say to that, so I just nodded and drank my espresso. It was strong and bitter, the way Roman espresso always was, and it grounded me. It reminded me I was here and not there, that I had space to breathe for the first time in days.
We sat there in silence for a while, watching people walk by. Tourists with cameras. Students with backpacks. Couples holding hands. The world turning like it always did, like nothing had happened.
Finally Nate paid the check, and we started walking back toward the hotel. The streets were crowded, full of people coming and going, and I let the noise wash over me. I felt wrung out but also strangely okay, like something that had been pressing on my chest for years had lifted just a little bit.
That was when I noticed the man near the fountain.
He was standing with his back to us, but something about the way he held himself made me look twice. Dark jacket, hands in his pockets, shoulders squared. He was not looking at a map or taking a photograph or doing anything tourists did. He was just standing there, still and watchful.
I slowed down without meaning to, and Nate glanced at me. "You all right?"
"Yeah." I looked away from the man and kept walking, my heart beating a little faster. It was probably nothing. Rome was full of people, and not everyone was a tourist. I was just on edge, jumping at shadows because I knew what Massimo's family was capable of.
I let it go.
We walked back to the hotel in the golden late-afternoon light, the kind of light that made Rome look like something out of a painting, and I did not look behind me again. Whatever was waiting for me back in Sicily could wait another day.
For now, I was here. I had my letter coming. I had told the truth to someone who listened and did not judge me for it.
It was enough.