Chapter 4 At Seven
SERAFINA
Two weeks teach me how much silence a marriage can hold when you stop filling it yourself.
I don't announce the change. I simply stop arranging my days around Rafael's schedule, stop holding dinner for footsteps that might not come, stop waiting up with a book I'm not reading.
My workshop hours stretch into the evening when a blend holds my attention. When I'm tired, I go to bed. The quiet becomes its own kind of company, and if Rafael notices the difference, he doesn't mention it.
He seems to assume I'm content, busy with my own projects, and in a way that's almost funny. He's finally right about something, just not in the way he thinks.
Thursday morning I drive to town for the market, the way I've done since my first visit to Fiorella's shop.
The square is already busy when I park, vendors arranging their stalls and early shoppers examining produce with the critical eyes of people who know exactly what they want.
I buy tomatoes from a woman who remembers my mother and olive oil from a man who insists I taste it before buying.
He is right to insist. I add a bottle to my bag.
Fiorella's shop is quieter than the market, the bell chiming softly as I push open the door. She's behind the counter with a cup of something steaming, sorting through a delivery of small amber bottles.
"You're early." She sets down a bottle and reaches for another. "I haven't even finished my coffee."
"I brought you something better than coffee." I pull the paper sleeve from my bag and set it on the counter between us. "The blend. I think I've finally got it."
Fiorella abandons her sorting and picks up the sleeve with careful fingers. She slides the smelling strip out, waves it gently, and brings it to her nose with the focused attention I've come to expect from her.
"The cedar is doing exactly what you wanted." She waves the strip again, slower this time. "Warm without being heavy. It's holding everything together."
"The bergamot was the problem." I lean against the counter, unreasonably pleased that she noticed. "Not the cedar. I got a replacement from my original supplier. The batch I'd been using had gone off somehow. Metallic underneath."
"Bad bergamot will ruin anything." She sets the strip down and picks up her coffee. "I had a customer once who blamed my jasmine for a blend that smelled like floor cleaner. Turned out her bergamot had oxidized in the bottle."
"What did she do?" I pull the paper sleeve back toward me, already imagining that conversation.
"Bought new bergamot." Fiorella retrieves the bottle she abandoned when I arrived. "And apologized to my jasmine."
I laugh and reach for the strip to tuck it back into its sleeve. There are still variations I want to test, but this one is ready to wear. I want Rafael to smell it on me next week.
"I'm collecting my professional equipment this weekend." I say it casually, like it's not the first time I've committed the plan to words. "I have better tools stored at my parents' house. I've been making do with what I brought when I got married."
"Making do is for emergencies." Fiorella tops up her coffee from a pot behind the counter. "You've been married how long?"
"Long enough that I should have retrieved them already." I accept the cup she pours me without asking. "I kept putting it off. Telling myself I didn't need them yet."
"And now?" Fiorella leaves the coffee pot beside us, giving me room to answer.
"Now I want to work properly." I wrap my hands around the warm ceramic. "I want to have everything I need instead of everything I can manage with."
"Good." She raises her cup in a small salute. "When you make something you're proud of, bring me a sample. I want to smell what you make next."
I leave the shop an hour later with the sample strip back in my bag and the comfortable feeling of having been understood.
The market is in full swing now, and I browse without hurrying, picking up ingredients I don't need and putting them back, enjoying the simple pleasure of a morning that belongs entirely to me.
My anniversary is next week.
I've been trying not to think about it too much, trying not to build expectations that might collapse under their own weight.
But walking through the market with the sun warm on my shoulders and the smell of fresh bread drifting from a nearby stall, I let myself imagine what it might be like.
A dinner at home. Just the two of us. The chance to remember who we were before everything got so complicated.
I buy a jar of honey from a vendor who swears it comes from bees that only visit orange blossoms.
It's probably not true, but I like the story.
***
Saturday arrives with the particular golden light that makes the groves look like something from a painting.
Yesterday I called my mother after dinner and told her I was coming today. Rafael was still in his study with papers spread across his desk.
She was delighted. She's been asking about the equipment for months, gentle questions that I've deflected with vague answers about timing and space and not being ready yet.
This time I told her I was ready, and I could hear the smile in her voice when she said she'd have everything waiting.
I'm in the front hall pulling on my jacket when Rafael appears on the stairs.
"You're going somewhere." He's dressed casually, no meetings today apparently, his hair still damp from the shower.
"My parents' house." I check my bag for my keys. "I'm picking up my equipment. The professional pieces I stored there."
"Now?" He comes down the last few steps and stops beside me. "Do you need help? Those cases are heavy."
"I can manage." I've managed plenty of things on my own lately. "My father will help me load the car."
"Let me come." His attention moves from my bag to the car keys in my hand. "I'm not doing anything that can't wait. And I'd like to see what you're bringing back."
I look at him, trying to read what's underneath the offer.
For a moment, I see him the way he was in the workroom, head tipped back against the chair while Marisol stood beside him. I don't need Sera there. You're already with me.
I've tried not to replay it. Mostly because every time I do, I end up somewhere different.
Sometimes the words sound like exactly what they were: a tired man talking about one buyer visit.
Other times I hear the ease with which he said them, and I remember Marisol's hand on his arm, her fingers brushing his hair back, and I can't make the two things separate again.
Rafael is standing in front of me now, waiting for an answer. No workroom or Marisol. No papers between us.
He looks almost like himself.
Or maybe he has always looked like himself and I've simply stopped knowing which version I'm going to get.
I don't want every decent thing he does to become a test he doesn't know he's taking. I don't want to spend the rest of my marriage watching his hands and measuring his pauses.
So I make myself stay in this moment.
"All right." I pick up my bag. "But I'm driving."
"I wouldn't dream of arguing." He grabs his own jacket from the hook by the door. "I know better than to get between you and your steering wheel."
The drive to my parents' estate takes us through countryside I've known my whole life, past groves and orchards and the small stone walls that mark property lines older than anyone can remember.
Rafael keeps up an easy commentary on the passing landscape, pointing out a tree that was struck by lightning last year and asking about a new fence someone's put up along the road. It's comfortable.
Familiar. The way we used to talk before silence became easier.
My mother is waiting on the front steps when we pull into the drive, her silver hair catching the morning sun.
"Both of you." She pulls me into a hug before I've fully closed the car door, then reaches for Rafael with her other arm. "I should have made more lunch."
"We won't stay that long." I return the hug with feeling. "I just want to get the equipment loaded before it gets too hot."
"Your father's in the back with everything." She releases us and leads the way into the house. "He's been organizing since yesterday. I've had to stop him twice from repacking things you already packed perfectly well."
"That sounds like him." I follow her through the familiar rooms, past the furniture I grew up with and the paintings I've seen so many times I could reproduce them from memory. "Where is he now?"
"Storage room." She pauses at the kitchen to gesture toward a tray of something that smells like lemon and sugar. "Help yourselves. I'll bring coffee in a bit."
Rafael snags one of the small cakes as we pass, earning a look from my mother that's more fond than disapproving. I remember when he used to do that as a teenager, sneaking food from her kitchen like he belonged there.
He did belong there. He's always belonged in the spaces my family occupies.
The storage room is at the back of the house, a converted cellar that stays cool even in summer. My father is inside when we arrive, moving a case from one stack to another with the careful attention of someone who thinks the arrangement matters.
"There she is." He sets down the case and crosses to embrace me. "I was starting to think you'd forgotten these existed."
"Never." I hug him back, breathing in the familiar smell of his cologne and the grove dust that never quite leaves his clothes. "I just wasn't ready."
"And now you are." He releases me and turns to Rafael with the particular expression he reserves for the man who married his daughter. "You're here to carry things, I hope. Some of these are heavier than they look."
"I'm here to be useful." Rafael shakes his hand with the ease of long acquaintance. "Point me at the heavy ones."