Chapter 2 The Hour He Forgot
SERAFINA
I cross the courtyard.
My feet carry me toward the gate before I've fully decided to go, but once I'm moving, stopping feels like admitting something I don't want to admit. Marisol is my friend. Rafael is my husband. There is no reason I should lurk in doorways watching them talk.
The fountain splashes behind me as I approach, and Marisol looks up first, her face breaking into the familiar smile that reminds me why I've loved her since we were teenagers.
"Sera." She shifts her coffee cup to her other hand and reaches for me with the free one. "I was just telling Rafael about the disaster in Messina last month. The buyer who wanted to inspect every single crate personally."
"The one who brought his own magnifying glass?" I take her hand and let her pull me into a quick half-embrace, the familiar scent of her jasmine perfume mixing with the orange blossom on the breeze. "You called me from the warehouse. I could hear him complaining in the background."
"He complained for three hours." Marisol releases me and rolls her eyes with theatrical exhaustion. "Three hours, Sera. About the exact shade of orange. As if we could control how the sun hits the fruit."
Rafael is watching us with the slightly bemused expression he always gets when Marisol and I fall into our rhythm. "She handled it better than I would have. I'd have told him to take his magnifying glass somewhere anatomically improbable."
"You would have been very polite and then complained to me for a week." I move to stand beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. "That's your style."
"I have range." He sounds offended, but his mouth is curving at the corner. "I can be direct when necessary."
"You can be direct with me." Marisol grins at him over her coffee cup. "You still haven't told me what you thought of the Palermo contact's proposal."
"I thought it was optimistic." Rafael shifts, and I feel him settle more comfortably against the gate post. "But optimism isn't the worst quality in a business partner."
I watch them fall back into the easy exchange, the shorthand of people who have been working closely for months.
Marisol mentions a name I don't recognize, and Rafael nods like it means something to him.
She references a meeting I wasn't told about, and he responds with information I'm hearing for the first time.
I don't expect a report on every conversation they have. I barely understand half the things Marisol tells me about her other clients, and I usually enjoy hearing her tell them anyway.
But I used to hear Rafael's stories, too. Now I recognize a buyer's name because my friend complained about him, not because my husband told me where he spent the day.
"We should move inside." Marisol indicates the folder Rafael took from her. "I brought the larger map. There's a table free somewhere, isn't there?"
"The workroom has the big table." Rafael pushes off from the gate post. "Sera, come with us? We could use another perspective."
I would rather he had asked me before I had to come looking, but I'm glad he asks. I fall into step beside him.
We walk back through the courtyard and into the house. Marisol complains about a café that has changed its espresso blend, and I tell her I warned her about it last week. She bumps my shoulder with hers, admitting nothing. For a moment, it feels like an ordinary morning with two people I love.
The workroom is cool and dim when we enter, the shutters still half-closed against the morning sun. Rafael sets the folder down and opens the shutters while Marisol spreads the papers across the wide oak table. I move a chair closer, but she lays a map over that end before I can sit.
"Sorry, Sera. I'm taking up the whole thing." Marisol holds down one curling corner while Rafael finds a paperweight for the other. "Could you move your chair a little?"
"Of course." I pull it aside, then stay on my feet rather than sit where I'll be looking at their backs. Rafael has already bent over the map. He points to a penciled note, and Marisol understands the question before he finishes asking it.
I move closer, looking down at the spread of papers. Someone has written a buyer's name beside an angry little face. I recognize my husband's handwriting and nearly ask about it, but Marisol is speaking again.
"I told him we should leave this until we'd both slept." Marisol presses her palm against a crease in the map. "But then he started worrying about his father again." She looks up at me. "Did he tell you? About Corrado?"
I look at Rafael, who has gone still beside the table.
"Tell me what?" I keep my voice light, but something cold is settling in my stomach.
"It's nothing." Rafael turns the paperweight beneath his palm, scraping it across the name it covers. "Just stress."
"He's terrified his father regrets handing over the estate.
" Marisol doesn't seem to notice the shift in atmosphere.
"He told me last week, during the late meeting with the Catanese buyers.
He couldn't stop thinking about it, he said.
Every time something falls through, he imagines Corrado watching and wishing he'd kept control. "
Last night I asked whether he was all right. He told me he needed sleep, and I moved my reading lamp so it wouldn't bother him. Was he lying there worrying about his father while I tried to be helpful by keeping quiet?
Marisol knows. I was beside him, and I didn't.
"Rafael." I wait until he meets my eyes. "Why did I have to hear that from Marisol?"
He has the grace to look uncomfortable. "It came up during the meeting. She was there. I was tired. I didn't mean to keep it from you."
"You didn't keep it from me." I hear my voice sharpen and force it back to something calmer. "You just didn't think to tell me at all."
"I assumed you knew." He runs a hand through his hair, the gesture frustrated rather than apologetic.
"It's not exactly a secret that I'm worried about whether I'm handling this well.
You know my father. You know how hard he worked to keep this place going.
I figured you'd already worked out that I spend half my nights wondering if I'm undoing it all. "
"You told me you were getting through the morning." I put my hand on the back of the chair I moved. "How was I supposed to hear all of that in it?"
"I didn't want to burden you with it." He says it like it explains everything.
"You didn't worry about burdening Marisol." I don't look at her when I say it. This is a question for him. "You used to tell me when you were scared."
Marisol is very carefully studying the map, her coffee cup suspended halfway to her mouth. I wonder if she realizes what she's stumbled into, or if she thinks this is just a minor misunderstanding between spouses.
"I wasn't planning to tell anyone." Rafael leaves the paperweight alone. "We were here late, and it came out. I should have talked to you, too. I'm sorry."
It's not enough, not really, but it's something. And we're standing in the middle of the workroom with Marisol three feet away, so I swallow the rest of what I want to say and nod.
"Then talk to me later." I glance toward Marisol, who is giving us the uncomfortable privacy of someone still standing within arm's reach. "When we're alone."
"Stay." He reaches for my hand, a quick squeeze that feels almost like the old Rafael. "I meant what I said. We could use your perspective."
I stay. I stand beside the table and listen while they discuss buyers and meetings and which contacts are worth pursuing.
Marisol knows the market better than I do; she knows which names open doors and which ones lead nowhere.
But I know the groves. I know the land. I grew up on the estate next door, walking these hills before I could spell their names.
"Not him again." Marisol finds the angry little face I noticed and laughs. "The fish market man. You should draw him a mackerel."
"You draw it." Rafael slides her the pencil. "You're the one who told him we liked an early start."
"I meant before lunch." She returns the pencil without improving his illustration. "How was I supposed to know he meant six in the morning?"
"He was standing in a fish market when you called him." Rafael's amusement is warmer than the words, and she laughs instead of defending herself.
"I remember that buyer," I say, and they both look at me. "The one who wanted proof we understood the working-class market. He did the same thing to my father years ago. Insisted on meeting at the fish market at dawn and spent the whole time watching to see if anyone flinched."
"Did your father flinch?" Marisol stops trying to flatten the map and rests her elbows on it, interested now.
"My father grew up gutting fish with his grandfather." I allow myself a small smile at the memory. "He ended up teaching the buyer how to fillet a sea bass. They've been friends ever since."
Rafael laughs, and the sound loosens something in my chest. "I should have brought Amadeo instead of trying to tough it out myself."
"Next time, ask me." I take the pencil from where Marisol left it and add a very poor fish beside the face. Rafael bends to look, laughs again, and for a moment we are all leaning over the same thing.
A knock at the door makes us all turn. Beatrice stands in the doorway, the small blue vase from my workshop cradled in her hands. She's filled it with early roses from the garden, pale pink and not quite open, and the sight of it makes me smile despite everything.
"I'm returning your vase," she says, crossing to set it on the windowsill. "With interest."
"They're beautiful." I move to examine the flowers more closely. "From the trellis by the terrace?"
"The first of the season." Beatrice adjusts the vase's position, then turns to survey the room, her gaze moving from Rafael to Marisol to the spread of papers on the table. "Still here? Have you even been outside since I saw you this morning, Rafael?"