13. Santino
— ? —
Santino
Settle down.
That’s what she said. “Hope you brought enough money to settle down.”
So I do exactly that.
The real estate agent’s name is Dorothy, and she’s approximately eight hundred years old with a handshake like a vise grip.
She shows me exactly one property, a small house on the edge of town, two bedrooms, a porch that needs repairs, a yard full of weeds that probably haven’t been touched since the previous owner died.
“It’s not much,” Dorothy says, squinting at me like she’s trying to figure out my angle. “Been on the market three years. The Johnson kids are in Dallas, don’t want to be bothered with it.”
“I’ll take it.”
She blinks. “You haven’t seen inside.”
“I’ll take it.”
“Mr. Bianchi-”
“I’ll wire the full asking price today.” I pull out my phone. “Can you give me the owner’s number? I’d like to ask if I can move in immediately.”
Dorothy stares at me a beat too long. Then she laughs, a raspy, delighted sound that transforms her whole face. “Well. Guess we’re doing this, then.”
By sunset, I have keys.
The mattress arrives the next morning. I found a store in the next town over that promised same-day delivery if I paid double, and I did, because sleeping on the floor felt too much like defeat.
My suitcase sits open in the corner of the bedroom, full of t-shirts and jeans and exactly zero plans beyond stay. wait. be here.
The house echoes. No furniture except the mattress, no art on the walls, no rugs to soften the creaking floorboards. It smells like dust and old paint and what might be mildew if I don’t deal with it soon.
It’s perfect.
It’s close to her.
That afternoon, I walk into town.
I need food, the kitchen is empty, obviously, and I figure I might as well start learning the geography of this place.
Wisteria is exactly as small as it looked from the car: one main street, a handful of shops, a church with a steeple that’s been repainted recently.
Everyone moves slowly. Everyone waves at each other.
No one waves at me.
I try the diner first. The woman behind the counter takes my order without meeting my eyes, slides my coffee across with a tight smile, and busies herself at the other end of the room until I leave.
The hardware store is the same. The bookshop. The tiny grocery with hand-lettered signs in the windows.
Weird looks. Dead ends. Conversations that stop when I walk in and start again, quieter, when I leave.
I’m not imagining it.
“Excuse me,” I say to the woman at the convenience store, seventy if she’s a day, kind face, reading glasses pushed up on her head. “I’m new in town, I was wondering-”
“I know who you are.”
I stop. “You do?”
“Big tattooed foreigner with a movie accent, asking about Hattie’s orchard.” She leans over the counter, and her kind face sharpens considerably. “Word travels fast around here, honey.”
“I’m not trying to cause trouble.”
“Good.” She smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “Because I’ll tell you what I told Dolores, and what Dolores told Pastor Mike, and what Pastor Mike told everyone at Wednesday night service: if you bother that girl, you’ll leave this town in a bag.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
“Cash or card?” she says brightly.
I pay for my groceries and leave without another word.
Back at the house, I sit on the porch steps and watch the sun sink below the treeline. The anger should come, and it’s there, somewhere, simmering in the back of my skull, but mostly what I feel is grateful.
Grateful that she has people. That this whole town has closed ranks around her. That while I was searching and spiraling and tearing myself apart, she was building a life, a community, a wall of protection that includes little old ladies who threaten dismemberment over corn chips.
She’s not alone.
I’m the only one alone here.
The thought hurts, but it’s a clean hurt. A correct one.
I call Chiara.
“You bought a house?” My twin’s voice goes so high it cracks. “Santino. You’ve been there two days.”
“She told me to settle down.”
“She didn’t mean literally settle down!”
“How was I supposed to know?” I lean back against the porch railing. The wood creaks. I add fix railing to my mental list. “She said it. I did it. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is-” Chiara makes a noise halfway between a laugh and a scream. “Never mind. Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”
So I do.
The yard. The way she looked, different, harder, her edges sharper than I remembered. The way she refused to believe me about the papers. The way she mentioned photos, an affair, our lake -
“Photos?” Chiara interrupts. “What photos?”
“I don’t know. She said Mother showed her photos of me and Allegra. At our place - the waterfall, the cave. I don’t-” I run a hand through my hair. “There are no photos because there was never anything to photograph. I never touched Allegra, Chiara. I barely even liked her.”
“I believe you.” Her voice is quiet. Fierce. “But someone manufactured evidence, Santi. Someone went to a lot of trouble to make Mel think-”
“I know.”
“We need to find those photos. We need to prove they’re fake.”
“First I need her to talk to me for more than five minutes without threatening to call the sheriff.”
Chiara sighs. Then: “What else?”
I close my eyes. “The town hates me. They’ve formed some kind of Mel Protection Alliance. A woman at the convenience store told me I’d leave in a bag if I bothered her.”
“I love that woman already.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” A pause. “What about the stroller?”
The stroller. The double stroller with two toddlers in it. Two small faces I only glimpsed for a moment before she lied to me and walked away.
They’re mine?
No.
“She said they’re not mine,” I say.
Silence.
Then, very quietly: “And you believe her?”
“I-” I stop. Think about the timeline. The way she vanished with everything, even the ceramic cat. How thorough she was, how completely she erased herself from my life. “No. I don’t believe her.”
“Santino.” Chiara’s voice is careful now. Controlled. The way it gets when she’s about to say the important part. “When did Mel leave?”
“Two years, three months, and-”
“And how old do toddlers in double strollers usually look?”
I do the math.
I’ve done it a hundred times since yesterday. Conception, pregnancy, birth. Timeframes and calendars and -
“TWINS?!” Chiara shrieks.
I hold the phone away from my ear. “Chiara-”
“She had TWINS and she didn’t TELL you?”
“She said they’re not-”
“Santino.” My sister’s voice is shaking. “Do the math. She left the night you flew to Tokyo - over two years ago - and those are not newborns in that stroller. She was already pregnant when she walked out. She was already-” A sound that might be a sob. “Santino, you have twins.”
“I don’t know that.”
“You do know that. You know it and she knows it and the only reason she’s lying is because she’s terrified of you.”
Terrified of me.
The words land like a punch to the gut.
I think about my mother, circling her. About forged documents and manufactured photos and threats I’m only beginning to understand. About a woman who ran so far and so fast she changed her name and built a new life in a town that threatens violence to strangers.
Of course she’s terrified of me.
I’m the monster in her story.
“I’m landing Friday,” Chiara says. “First flight I could get that doesn’t route through three countries. Six in the morning your time - pick me up at the airport in Austin.”
“Chiara, you don’t have to-”
“Shut up. I’m coming. And between now and then, you’re going to listen to me very carefully.
” Her voice shifts into what I call her general tone, the one she uses to command boardrooms and organize family events.
“You’re not going to push her. No demands.
You give her space and time and you prove that you can be trusted before you even think about those children. ”
“But-”
“No. Listen.” A breath. “We need a plan, Santi. Not a plan to win her back - a plan to deserve her back. Do you understand the difference?”
I think about the tattoo over my heart. About two years of therapy and gym sessions and counting the days until I could breathe again.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I understand.”
“Good. Then here’s step one: flowers.”
“Flowers?”
“Women like flowers. Send her flowers. Not extravagant ones - simple, the kind that say ‘I’m thinking of you, no strings attached.’”
I reach for the notebook I’ve started keeping. There’s a pen on the porch railing. I write it down. Flowers, simple, no strings attached.
“Step two: honesty.”
“I’ve been honest.”
“You’ve been desperate. There’s a difference. Next time you talk to her, if she gives you a next time, don’t lead with explanations. Lead with listening. Let her talk. Let her rage. Let her say every horrible thing she’s been holding in for two years.”
I write that down too. Shut up and listen.
“And step three-” Chiara pauses. “Do not, under any circumstances, bring up the twins until she offers it.”
“What?”
“I know you want to know. I know it’s killing you. But she denied it for a reason, and if you push before she’s ready, you’ll lose her forever.” Another breath. “Trust me on this. She has to choose to tell you. That’s the only way this works.”
I stare at the notebook in my lap. My handwriting looks shaky, unfamiliar.
“When did you get so smart?” I ask.
“I’ve always been the smart twin. You’re the one who got the muscles and the brooding.” A wet laugh. “Write it all down, Santi. I know you. You’ll forget the second you’re in front of her and that stupid brain of yours stops working.”
“I’m writing it down.”
“Everything?”
“Every word.” I look at the list. Flowers, no strings. Shut up and listen. Don’t mention the twins. “I actually wrote it down.”
“Good.” A pause. Softer now. “We’re going to fix this, Santi. I don’t know how yet, but we’re going to fix it. She’s my best friend and you’re my brother, and I refuse to live in a world where you two aren’t together.”
My throat tightens. “I love you, Chiara.”
“I love you too, idiot. Now go to sleep. I’ll see you in a week.”
She hangs up.
I sit on the porch a while after, watching the stars come out one by one.
The same stars I saw in Tuscany, more or less.
The same ones I showed Mel the night I proposed, pointing out Orion and making up ridiculous stories about the constellations until she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe.
The groveling plan.
It sounds absurd when I think about it like that. A step-by-step guide to proving I’m worthy of a woman who already decided I wasn’t.
But it’s a beginning. A start.
There’s one thing I don’t write on the list, because writing it down would make it real.
I have ninety days.
That’s what the customs officer stamped into my passport when I landed in Austin, ninety days, the standard tourist window for an Italian citizen, and not one day more.
After that I’m not a devoted husband earning his way back.
I’m a foreign national overstaying a visa, and the same immigration lawyers my mother keeps on retainer would have a field day with that if they ever thought to look.
Ninety days to make a woman who has every reason to hate me decide she wants me to stay.
And after that? I don’t have an answer for after that.
There’s no visa category for “in love with my estranged wife and our children.” A green card takes a marriage the state recognizes and a mountain of paperwork and time I don’t have, and it starts with Mel signing, wanting, on the record, in front of the government.
Which means the clock isn’t just in my head. It’s stamped in ink.
I do the math I keep pretending I’m not doing. Four days gone to finding her and buying the house.
Eighty-six left.
And for the first time in two years, three months, and eighteen days -
I have hope, and a deadline, and no idea which one will win.