Chapter 7 The Gate Stays Shut #3
She's right. I'm exhausted in a way that goes deeper than physical tiredness, worn down by months of waiting and hoping and having those hopes crushed over and over again.
I finish my tea and let my mother lead me back upstairs, let her pull back the covers on my old bed and kiss my forehead like I'm twelve years old and recovering from a nightmare.
"Sleep well, sweetheart." She pauses at the door, her hand on the frame. "Your father and I are here. Whatever you need, whatever you decide, we're here."
I move the suitcase to the bench at the foot of the bed, change into the sleep clothes I packed, and climb under the covers, pulling the familiar weight of my childhood blankets up to my chin.
The room is dark and quiet, and I can hear the distant sound of wind in the lemon groves, a sound I knew long before I married Rafael Visconti.
I close my eyes and wait for sleep to come.
***
Morning arrives too bright and too soon, sunlight showing through the pale curtains. I lie in bed for a while, staring at the ceiling, letting the events of last night settle into something I can examine without falling apart.
I sit up slowly. My eyes ache, but I don't feel like crying now. I want a shower and something clean to wear. Those are decisions I can make.
The suitcase is still on the bench where I left it, half unpacked from last night.
I find a clean shirt and trousers, something that doesn't remind me of standing in that office doorway watching my world rearrange itself, and I get dressed with the mechanical efficiency of someone who needs to keep moving or fall apart.
My perfume notebook is on the desk where I put it.
I open it to the page I last worked on before the anniversary, a formula for a citrus blend I've been developing for months. The notes are in my handwriting, careful and precise, and for a moment I feel like myself again. Like the person I was before my marriage started falling apart around me.
I close the notebook and tuck it under my arm. I need to go outside, breathe fresh air, remember that the world is bigger than one office and one broken promise and one friendship that turned into something I don't recognize.
The front garden is bright with morning sunlight when I step outside, the lemon trees my mother tends casting familiar shadows across the path.
I walk slowly, letting the scent of the blossoms fill my lungs, trying to ground myself in something that isn't the memory of Marisol's hand on my husband's shoulder.
My father is at the gate when I reach it, standing with his arms crossed and his gaze fixed on something in the distance. I follow his eyes and see a car turning into the drive, a car I recognize because I've sat in it a hundred times.
Rafael.
My heart does something complicated in my chest, a lurch of fear and anger and something else I don't want to examine too closely. The car slows before the gate and stops outside it.
He gets out, and for a moment we just look at each other across the gravel drive.
He's wearing the same clothes he had on last night, wrinkled now and looking slept in.
His hair is disheveled, his eyes shadowed, and there's something desperate in his face that makes me want to go to him despite everything.
But my father is already moving, putting himself between me and the gate, and I don't try to stop him.
"Sera." Rafael leaves the car door open behind him. "Please. Mother told me you were here. I woke up at the office. Marisol said you came and left, but I can only remember pieces. I need to talk to you."
He sounds bewildered. I want to ask which pieces he remembers, whether he heard me asking her to leave. But I can feel how quickly this would become another conversation where I do all the explaining. I am not ready.
"Not now." I stop beside my father and keep the notebook pressed against my ribs. "I can't do this right now."
"Sera." He takes a step toward the gate, and my father moves to block him.
"You heard her." My father's voice is cold in a way I've rarely heard it, the voice of a man who has watched his daughter cry and decided someone is going to answer for it. "Not now means not now. You don't get to make my daughter cry and then walk onto her land like you have the right."
"Amadeo, please." Rafael's hands come up, palms out, placating. "I know how this looks. I know I've failed her. But I need to understand what happened, I need to talk to her."
"What you need is to leave." My father puts his hand over the gate's latch. "My daughter asked for space. You're going to give it to her."
Rafael looks past my father to me, his eyes searching my face for something I don't know how to give him.
I think about Saturday, about the way he helped me in my workshop, about how that felt like the beginning of something better.
I think about last night, about blowing out the candles while his mother sat with me, about the image of Marisol bent over him that I can't stop seeing.
I don't say anything. I just look back at him and let him see everything I'm feeling, all the hurt and confusion and anger I don't have words for yet.
"Sera." Rafael takes hold of one of the bars, searching for my eyes. "Please."
I step back from the gate. My father keeps his hand over the latch.
It stays shut.