1. Mel
— ? —
Mel
Three Years Later
Sunday dinner at the Bianchi estate never changes, and that’s its whole cruelty.
The table seats eighteen but there are only seven of us tonight, spread out across the gleaming mahogany like chess pieces waiting for a game to start.
The chandelier throws prismatic light across crystal glasses and bone-white china, and the housekeeper whose name I still can’t pronounce brings out course after course of food I can barely taste.
Santino sits at the far end of the table with Allegra at his elbow, their heads bent over a tablet showing merger projections. They’ve been like that for the past hour. For the past year, if I’m being honest with myself, which I try not to be because the honesty hurts too much.
I spear a piece of fish with my fork and focus on chewing.
“The numbers from Milan came in this morning,” Allegra is saying, her voice low and intimate in a way that makes my jaw clench. “Much better than projected. If we can lock down the Ricci contract by end of month-”
“Show me the margins on page three.”
He doesn’t look up. He never looks up anymore.
I remember when he couldn’t stop looking at me.
When I’d walk into a room and his whole face would change, would soften into a look that was private and warm and only ever mine.
When he’d sit next to me at these dinners with his hand on my knee under the table, thumb tracing circles on my skin while he pretended to pay attention to whatever his mother was droning on about.
Two years ago, God, only two years, we had a different life inside this same one.
I think about a Tuesday morning that first spring after the wedding: rain against the windows, no meetings until noon, and Santino refusing to let me out of bed.
He’d made espresso and brought it up and then promptly knocked it over reaching for me, and instead of caring about the sheets he’d just laughed, this big helpless laugh, and pulled me on top of him and said in that morning-rough voice that he’d buy new sheets, he’d buy a new bed, he’d buy the whole estate a new roof, as long as I didn’t move for another hour.
We stayed until noon. He was forty minutes late to a board meeting and didn’t apologize to anyone.
That afternoon he sent me a photo of a hardware-store receipt for one set of white sheets with the caption worth it.
I still have it somewhere. A man who would blow off Massimo Bianchi’s board and grin about ruined linens, just to keep me in his arms one more hour.
I don’t know where that man went. I’ve spent a year looking for him in this one.
Now there’s an empty chair between us, and Allegra fills all the space he used to give me.
Stop it, I tell myself. Eat your fish. Get through the dinner. Go home and cry in the shower like a normal person.
“She doesn’t even try anymore,” Vittoria says in Italian to Massimo, gesturing toward me with her wine glass. “Look at her. Sitting there like a lump. No conversation, no effort. I told you this would happen.”
I keep my face perfectly blank. Fork to mouth. Chew. Swallow.
They’ve been doing this for years, talking about me in Italian right in front of me, secure in the knowledge that I can’t understand a word.
It started small: little comments about my clothes, my hair, my American accent when I attempted their language.
But over time, as the marriage soured, the comments got sharper.
Crueler. And I sat through all of it, cataloging every word, because knowing what they really thought of me felt like the only power I had left.
“She’s gained weight,” Vittoria continues. “Do you see it in her face? Perhaps if she tried harder to keep herself presentable, he wouldn’t need to spend so much time with Allegra.”
I haven’t gained weight. If anything, I’ve lost it, the stress of the past year has killed my appetite, and my clothes hang looser than they used to. But Vittoria sees what she wants to see, which is a failure of a daughter-in-law who never deserved her son in the first place.
“It’s been two years,” Massimo says, his voice flat and disinterested. “Still nothing. The doctors say there’s no issue, but I have my doubts. Perhaps the fault lies with her.”
And there it is. The word that’s been hanging over this table for months, never spoken in English where I might understand it.
Sterile.
They think I can’t give them an heir. They think my body is broken, that I’m failing in the one task a Bianchi wife is supposed to accomplish.
They don’t know that Santino and I haven’t slept together in six months.
That the last time he touched me was a kiss on the forehead as he left for yet another business trip with Allegra, so distracted he didn’t even notice I was crying.
They don’t know, and I’ll never tell them.
“The American,” Vittoria says, and the way she pronounces it makes it sound like a disease.
“I warned him. I told him what she was from the beginning. A gold-digger with no breeding, no culture, no understanding of what this family requires. But he was too blinded by - what, her red hair? Her willingness?”
My hand tightens on my fork.
“And now look at him.” She gestures toward the end of the table, where Santino is scrolling through spreadsheets while Allegra murmurs in his ear.
“She’s losing him. Anyone with eyes can see it.
Allegra understands the business. Allegra understands the family.
Allegra would never sit at this table like a pretty piece of furniture with nothing to contribute. ”
I want to scream. To stand up and tell her in perfect Italian exactly what I think of her, every horrible word I’ve memorized over three years of swallowed cruelty, every insult I’ve taken with a smile.
I want to ask her if she’s proud of herself, this elegant woman with her Hermès scarves and her poisoned tongue, driving a wedge between her son and his wife with the precision of a surgeon.
But I don’t.
Because the only person who knows I speak Italian is Chiara, and that secret is the only card I have left to play.
“Do you think he’s sleeping with her?” Vittoria asks, casual as discussing the weather. “With Allegra? I wouldn’t blame him, honestly. A man has needs, and when his wife can’t-”
“That’s enough.”
The words crack through the dining room like a whip, and I look up to see Chiara slamming her wine glass down so hard the stem nearly snaps. Her dark eyes are blazing, her jaw tight with fury, and she’s glaring at her mother with an expression that could melt steel.
“I said enough, Mamma. Not another word.”
Vittoria blinks, the picture of wounded innocence. “Chiara, darling, I don’t know what you’re-”
“Don’t. Don’t play dumb with me.” Chiara pushes back from the table, her chair scraping against the marble floor. “I know exactly what you’ve been saying. And if I hear one more word about Mel - one more syllable - I’ll get up from this table and I won’t come back. Do you understand me?”
Nobody at the table moves.
Santino finally looks up from his tablet, frowning. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” Vittoria says smoothly. “Your sister is being dramatic, as usual.”
“I’m being dramatic?” Chiara laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“Chiara.” Massimo’s voice is low, warning. “Sit down.”
“I’ll sit down when Mamma learns basic human decency. So, probably never.”
I should speak. I should thank Chiara, or defend myself, or at least acknowledge what just happened. But my throat is tight and my eyes are burning and I can’t fall apart at this table. Not in front of them. Not where Vittoria can add it to her catalog of my failures.
“Excuse me,” I manage, pushing back my chair. “I need to - excuse me.”
I walk out of the dining room with my head high and my spine straight, and I make it all the way to the bathroom before the first sob breaks free.
***
The marble is cold against my forehead.
I’m leaning over the sink, hands braced on either side of the basin, breathing through the waves of nausea that keep rolling over me.
The dinner sits like lead in my stomach, and I can’t tell if it’s the fish or the stress or a third thing entirely, the one I’ve been ignoring for weeks because I can’t afford to think about it.
You’re not pregnant, I tell myself firmly. You can’t be pregnant. You haven’t slept with him in six months.
But there was that night. Three weeks ago, when he came home from Milan and I was already half-asleep and he climbed into bed beside me and for one breath, just one, he was my Santino again.
Soft and warm and needing me. We didn’t talk.
We barely looked at each other. But his hands found me in the dark, and I was so desperate for any piece of him that I didn’t ask questions.
He was gone before I woke up. Left a note about an early meeting. And I told myself it didn’t mean anything, that one night didn’t change the past year of silence and distance, and I’ve been telling myself that every day since.
But my period is late. And the nausea won’t stop. And I can’t do this here, not in this bathroom, not with Vittoria’s words still ringing in my ears.
Sterile. The American. She’s losing him.
A tear slips down my cheek and I wipe it away angrily. I don’t cry at the Bianchi estate. That’s my rule. I save it for the shower at home, where the water drowns out the sound and no one can see me fall apart.
But home is an hour away, and Santino drove, and I can’t even leave without him noticing, without having to explain why I need to go.
Not that he’d notice. He barely notices anything about me anymore.
I fix my face in the mirror. Dab cold water under my eyes. Reapply the lipstick I keep in my clutch for exactly these moments. By the time I’m done, I look almost normal. Almost like a woman who has her life together.
The lie holds, at least on the outside.
I walk back to the dining room expecting the usual scene: Vittoria holding court, Massimo reading his phone, Chiara sulking, Santino and Allegra absorbed in their own little world.
What I find instead is an empty table.
The dishes are still there, half-eaten food growing cold on china plates. The chandelier still throws its light across the room. But the chairs are pushed back, abandoned, and I can hear voices from somewhere deeper in the house, raised, alarmed, wrong.
“Hello?” I call out. “Santino? Chiara?”
Footsteps. A door slamming. Someone crying out in Italian, too fast for me to catch.
I follow the sound through the hall to the sitting room, and my heart stops.
Santino is on the floor.
He’s curled on his side, face gray-white, hand pressed to his stomach, and Chiara is kneeling beside him screaming for someone to call an ambulance while Vittoria stands frozen in the doorway with her hand pressed to her mouth.
I don’t remember moving. One second I’m in the hallway and the next I’m on my knees beside him, my hands on his face, his forehead slick with sweat.
“Santino. Santi, look at me. What happened? What’s wrong?”
His eyes find mine, and for a moment, just a moment, he sees me.
“Mel,” he whispers. “It hurts.”
And then his eyes roll back, and the screaming starts all over again.