Chapter 7 The Gate Stays Shut #2
"You don't have to know what comes next." She picks up her own phone, checks the screen, and puts it away. "For now, just get somewhere you can rest."
"I don't know if anything can fix it." I pick up the suitcase and feel the weight of it pull against my shoulder. "I don't know if I want it fixed. I just know I can't stay here tonight and pretend everything is normal when it isn't."
Beatrice nods and opens the bedroom door for me.
We walk together down the stairs, through the front hall, out to where my car is still parked in the courtyard. The night air is colder than it was an hour ago, and I pull my coat tighter as I open the trunk and set the suitcase inside.
"Corrado is going to the office." Beatrice stands beside the driver's door, her phone in her hand. "He'll stay with Rafael for now. You don't need to worry about leaving him without family there."
"Thank you." It means something, that she's taking care of him while still taking my side. It means something that she's not asking me to wait, to reconsider, to give him another chance before I've even had time to process what I saw.
"Drive safely." She pulls me into a hug, brief and fierce, and then steps back so I can get in the car. "Call me when you arrive. And Serafina? Whatever you decide, I'm with you. I can love my son and still help you leave. You don't have to choose which of those to believe."
I can't answer that.
The words are too big and the night is too heavy and I need to be somewhere else before I fall apart completely.
So I just nod, and get in the car, and start the engine, and pull out of the courtyard without looking back.
***
The drive to my parents' estate follows roads I could navigate blindfolded. Past the olive groves, around the curve where the old stone wall crumbles into wildflowers every spring, up the hill where you can see all the way to the coast on clear days.
Tonight there's no view, just darkness and the yellow wash of my headlights and the white line of the road unspooling ahead.
My parents have opened the gates for me. I turn between the stone pillars and follow the familiar drive toward the house.
The house is lit up when I pull into the courtyard, warm light spilling from the kitchen windows and the front hall. My mother is waiting on the porch, wrapped in a shawl, and my father is standing behind her with his arms crossed and his face unreadable.
They know something is wrong. They can see it in the way I get out of the car, in the suitcase I pull from the trunk, in the fact that I'm here in the early hours of Friday when I should be home in bed with my husband.
My mother reaches me first. She takes the suitcase from my hand and passes it to my father without a word, and then she pulls me into her arms and holds me the way she used to when I was small and the world was too big and too frightening to face alone.
"I've got you." Her voice is soft against my hair. "Whatever it is, I've got you. You're home now."
I let myself cry then, just for a moment. Just long enough to feel the relief of being somewhere I don't have to explain myself, somewhere I don't have to justify my presence or argue for the right to exist.
Then I pull back and wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and look at my father, who is still watching me with that careful, contained expression.
"I'll tell you everything." I wipe my cheek again, but it does little good. "Can I wash my face first?"
"Take your time." My father sets down the suitcase beside me. "We'll be in the kitchen when you're ready."
I take my suitcase and climb the stairs to my old bedroom, the one I grew up in.
It looks the same as it always did, the same pale blue walls and white curtains and the bookshelf full of novels I read as a teenager.
My mother has kept it ready for visits. I used to tell her she could use the room for something else. I'm glad she never listened.
I set the suitcase on the bed and open it, pulling out the toiletries bag and the notebook and the wrapped bottles of perfume.
The notebook goes on the desk by the window, the bottles on the shelf where I used to keep my first attempts at blending.
I unpack a few clothes and hang them in the closet, and then I go to the bathroom and wash my face with cold water until my eyes stop looking quite so swollen.
I dry my face and send Beatrice a message to tell her I've arrived. Then I go back downstairs.
***
The kitchen is warm and bright, and my mother has made tea even though it's the middle of the night.
My father is sitting at the table with a glass of something amber, his hands wrapped around it like he needs something to hold onto.
They both look up when I come in, and I see the questions in their faces, the worry they're trying to contain.
I sit down across from them and wrap my hands around the cup my mother slides toward me. The heat seeps into my palms, grounding me in the present, reminding me that I'm here and alive and not back in that office watching Marisol touch my husband like she had every right.
"Start from the beginning." My father sets his glass aside and turns his chair toward mine. "Or start from wherever you need to. We're listening."
So I tell them. Not everything, not the whole history of missed dinners and broken promises and months of feeling like an afterthought in my own marriage.
But enough. Tonight's anniversary dinner, the table I set, the candles I lit, the dress I changed out of when it became clear he wasn't coming.
The phone call from Marisol. The drive to the office. What I saw when I walked in.
My mother's face goes still and hard as I talk, the way it does when she's truly angry. My father's expression doesn't change, but his fingers tighten on the edge of the table.
"His shirt was open?" My mother stops with her hand beside the teapot. "And she was bent over him?"
"Yes." I stop trying to lift my cup and set it down. "She said she was taking care of him. She said he was exhausted and needed rest. But she wouldn't leave when I asked. She stood there explaining why I was being unreasonable while he lay there with his eyes closed."
"And what did he say?" My father leaves his glass untouched beside him. "Rafael. Did he explain himself?"
"He couldn't." I stare into my tea, at the way the surface ripples when my hands shake. "He seemed half asleep. He said my name, but he couldn't seem to get much further. But she was between us, and she wouldn't move, and I couldn't stand there fighting for the right to speak to my own husband."
"So you left." My mother reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers. "Good. You did the right thing."
"I needed to leave." I look up at her, wanting her to understand. "Even if there's an explanation for last night, there are all the nights before it. I can't keep doing this."
"Serafina." My father waits until I lift my eyes to his. "You don't have to prove what happened in that office to stay here. You called because you needed to come home. That is enough."
"I should have told you sooner." I press my thumb against the cup's handle. "About how things have been. I kept thinking it would pass."
"You can tell us now." My mother leaves her hand beside mine. "Or after you've slept. We aren't going anywhere."
"I don't know what to do." I look from one parent to the other. Neither rushes to answer for me. "I don't know what happens next."
"What happens next is you sleep." My mother squeezes my hand and then releases it, standing up from the table with the air of someone who has made a decision. "It's nearly three in the morning. Nothing gets resolved tonight. You rest, and tomorrow we figure out what you want and how to get it."