8. Senna
— ? —
Senna
The first chord hits and my body goes still.
“This one’s called ‘Finding Light,’” Rocco says into the mic, his fingers finding the opening progression with the easy confidence of someone who’s played it a hundred times. “The song that broke the block.”
Fiorella leans toward her microphone, swaying slightly with the rhythm, and when she opens her mouth to sing the first line, I hear-
No.
“I kept your silence like a secret,” Fiorella sings, her voice honey-smooth, “wore it underneath my skin-”
The second line lands and my hands go cold.
“ - waited for the words to find me, let the outside in.”
I know that phrasing. I know the way those syllables fall against the melody, the specific rhythm I spent three hours getting right in my parents’ living room when I was twenty-two. The torn corner of the notebook. The coffee stain on page forty-three from the night I couldn’t sleep.
My body knows before my mind catches up. My throat closes. My fingers curl into fists at my sides.
The chorus hits - “Take my quiet, make it loud” - and I hear myself at nineteen, twenty, twenty-two, all the versions of me who wrote this song pouring themselves into those words while everyone around me insisted I should be practical, be supportive, be anything other than what I actually was.
Lucia says something beside me. I don’t hear it.
“Take my quiet, make it loud,” Fiorella and Rocco sing together, their voices blending in a harmony I could have predicted because I designed it that way, because I built this song piece by piece in a practice room a decade ago.
“Take my shadow, pull it out. I’ve been waiting here so long - show me I’m not wrong, show me I’m not wrong. ”
The crowd is swaying. Phones are up, recording. Someone near the front actually has their hands over their heart like they’re witnessing something holy.
And Rocco is looking at Fiorella while he plays - not romantically, not like a man in love, but like a man who’s found something precious, like a man who’s finally discovered what he was looking for.
He’s glowing with it. He’s radiant with the joy of creation, and the thing he’s creating is built on something that was stolen from me.
“Excuse me.” I push past Lucia, suddenly desperate for air. “I need to-”
“Wait, they’re almost at the bridge-”
I don’t wait. I can’t wait. The bridge is the part I’m proudest of, the part where the melody does something unexpected, and I cannot stand here and watch my sister perform it like it belongs to her while my husband accompanies it like he’s never heard anything more beautiful.
I weave through the crowd, keeping my head down, but the song follows me - “underneath the weight of ordinary days, I built a door you couldn’t see” - and I feel it like a knife, each word cutting deeper because I remember writing them.
I remember sitting at the window of my parents’ house at three in the morning, trying to articulate what it felt like to have a gift no one wanted you to use, trying to find language for the particular loneliness of being told you’re special but not special in the right way.
“ - and now you’re standing at the threshold, asking why I held the key-”
Someone bumps my shoulder and I almost lose my balance.
“Sorry,” they murmur, but I barely hear them because I’m focused on the exit, on the door that leads to the lobby, on getting out of this room before the song ends and everyone applauds and I have to pretend I didn’t just watch my life be stolen in front of a hundred witnesses.
“Take my quiet, make it loud-”
I reach the door.
“ - take my shadow, pull it out-”
I push through it.
“ - I’ve been waiting here so long-”
The lobby is blessedly empty, blessedly silent except for the muffled sound of applause beginning to build behind me. I stand with my back against the wall and try to remember how to breathe while my mind races through the impossible math of what I just witnessed.
Fiorella has my songbook. She must. That’s the only explanation, the only way any of this makes sense.
She found it or she took it, and she’s been feeding my songs to Rocco as her own, and he has no idea - or does he?
Does he know? Did he recognize the handwriting?
Did he see my name on the pages and decide it didn’t matter because the music was good and the source was convenient?
I think about the conversation I overheard, the loveless he mentioned, the way he talked about Fiorella bringing him back to life.
Was that my music he was talking about? Was it my songs that made him feel something again, my melodies that broke the block, while I stood outside the glass watching him credit my sister for the work I did?
The door opens and a couple emerges from the venue, laughing about something, oblivious to me pressed against the wall like I’m trying to disappear into it.
“ - best thing I’ve heard in years,” the woman is saying. “Where does that come from? That level of emotional honesty?”
Her companion shrugs. “Chemistry, I guess. You can’t fake that.”
They pass me without a glance, and I stay where I am, trying to decide what to do with the knowledge that’s settling into my bones like poison. My song. My sister. My husband. The whole ugly triangle of it finally making sense in the worst possible way.
The applause inside swells to a crescendo, and I hear the host’s voice, muffled but enthusiastic: “Wasn’t that incredible? Let’s hear it again for Rocco Zangari and Fiorella Caswell!”
Fiorella Caswell.
Not Fiorella Caswell performing a song written by Senna Caswell-Zangari.
Not Fiorella Caswell interpreting her sister’s work.
Just Fiorella Caswell, genius collaborator, muse to the comeback of the decade.
I push off the wall and walk toward the exit, and I don’t let myself look back.
***
Outside, the Florence night is cool and clear, and I stand on the sidewalk trying to figure out where to go.
Home doesn’t feel safe anymore. The house where I’ve been invisible for eighteen months, where my sister installed herself like she belonged there, where my husband wrote music with someone else while I arranged flowers and answered emails and forgot that I used to be someone who made things.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out.
Rocco: Where did you go? I saw you in the crowd.
I stare at the message for a long moment.
He saw me. He saw me, and he still sang that song with her, still looked at her like she was the answer to everything, still gave his performance to the room instead of coming to find me afterward.
Another message appears.
Rocco: The showcase went amazing. Coming home soon. Can’t wait to tell you about it.
Can’t wait to tell me about it.
Like I wasn’t there. Like I didn’t just watch the whole thing with my own eyes. Like my presence at the most important night of his career was a footnote, something to be informed about after the fact rather than shared in the moment.
Before I can respond, a notification pops up - someone’s tagged me on social media. I tap it without thinking.
It’s a clip from the showcase. Rocco and Fiorella at the piano, voices blending, the crowd captivated. The caption reads: “Rocco Zangari’s new muse hits different ?? sorry to the wife but this chemistry is UNMATCHED ????”
Twenty thousand views already. Comments flooding in.
I close the app. My hands are shaking.
My phone buzzes again.
Fiorella: Such a special night. Thank you for coming to support us. ??
I turn off my phone, start the car, and drive home through streets that look like a foreign country.