18. Mel
— ? —
Mel
Not a regular storm, this is Texas weather, the kind that makes the sky go green and the air go still before everything explodes. Hattie warned me before she and Chiara left for Marigold that weather was coming, told me to keep the shutters closed and the flashlights ready.
I didn’t realize she meant the apocalypse.
The first crack of thunder wakes the twins at nine-fifteen. It takes me forty minutes to get them settled again, two lullabies, three stories, four increasingly creative lies about how thunder is just clouds playing drums. By ten, they’re finally asleep.
By ten-thirty, I’m alone in the living room, watching the windows shake.
The house groans. An actual groan, wood protesting against wind that sounds like it’s trying to tear the roof off. Rain hammers the glass so hard I can’t see anything outside, just sheets of water and occasional flashes of lightning that turn the whole world white.
I’m fine.
Absolutely fine.
I grew up in tornado country. I know what storms sound like. This is just weather, just -
The front door rattles.
I freeze.
It rattles again. Not wind, wind doesn’t shake a door like that, doesn’t have a rhythm to it. Someone is pressing against it. Someone trying to get in.
Every horror movie I’ve ever seen arrives at once.
My phone is in my hand before I consciously decide to grab it. I dial Santino’s number and press the phone to my ear, backing away from the door, my heart hammering so loud I can barely hear the ring.
“Mel?”
“Someone’s trying to get in.” My voice comes out a whisper. “The front door - someone’s at my front door.”
“I’m coming.”
I hear the sound of his door slamming, and then his feet, running, splashing, his breath harsh in my ear.
“Don’t hang up,” he says. “I’m coming, Mel. I’m coming right now.”
“The twins are asleep down the hall-”
“Don’t go near the door. Is there anything you can-”
Another rattle. Louder this time.
I bite back a whimper. “Hurry.”
“I’m running. I’m halfway there. Is the door locked?”
“Yes.”
“Windows?”
“All locked. Hattie made sure.”
“Good. That’s good.” His breathing is ragged, he’s running full speed through the storm, a mile of rain and wind between us. “Keep talking to me. What do you see?”
“Nothing. Just - the door keeps moving. Someone’s pushing on it.”
“Okay. Okay.” I can hear him thinking, planning, even as he runs. “I’m almost at the property. Going to go around back first, check the perimeter. Stay on the line.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Silence except for his breathing. The slam of rain. Distant thunder rolling overhead.
Then his voice again, closer: “I’m at the back fence. Coming around the east side. I don’t see anyone yet.”
“Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“You’re literally never careful.”
A huff of breath that might be a laugh. “Fair. Coming around to the front now. I can see the porch-”
The door rattles again. I make a sound I’m not proud of.
“I see it,” Santino says. “I see what’s doing it.”
“What? What is it?”
A long pause.
“It’s a raccoon.”
“…What?”
“A raccoon. A very large, very determined raccoon.” Another pause. “It’s going through your dumpster with what I can only describe as criminal dedication. The wind keeps blowing the lid against your door.”
I stare at the phone.
“A raccoon,” I repeat.
“He’s enormous. I’m honestly impressed.”
“It’s a raccoon.”
“Do you want me to scare him off?”
All the fear, all the adrenaline, all the terror of the past five minutes, it crests and breaks and I’m laughing. Laughing so hard my knees go weak, laughing until tears stream down my face, laughing with the phone pressed to my ear and the storm howling outside.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Santino says, and I hear the sounds of a chase, a hiss, a crash, and then his footsteps on the porch.
I open the door.
He’s drenched.
Absolutely soaked through, water streaming down his face, his shirt plastered to his chest, his hair dark and dripping. He’s breathing hard from the run, and there’s a leaf stuck to his shoulder, and he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
“The perimeter is secure,” he reports, completely serious. “No intruders. One raccoon, successfully evacuated. He seemed annoyed.”
I’m still laughing. Still crying. The adrenaline has nowhere to go and I’m shaking with it.
A thunderclap detonates directly overhead, so loud the house shakes, so close I feel it in my teeth, and I jump straight into him.
His arms come around me automatically.
I’m hugging him.
It takes my brain three full seconds to process this information. I’m hugging Santino Bianchi. I’ve got my face pressed against his soaked chest and my arms wrapped around his waist and I’m hugging him.
I should stop. I should pull back, apologize, maintain the distance I’ve been keeping.
I don’t stop.
My body remembers, all on its own, what it was like to be safe on him. The width of his shoulders. The warmth of his chest through the wet fabric. The way his arms tighten, not demanding, just holding.
I sink in.
He doesn’t say anything. Just breathes, slow and steady, his heart beating under my ear.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper eventually. “I thought-”
“Don’t apologize.” His voice is rough. “Never apologize for calling me.”
“It was a raccoon.”
“It could have been anything. You did the right thing.”
I lean back far enough to see his face. Water drips from his hair onto his cheek, slides down his jaw. His eyes are dark and intent, watching me like I might break.
“Did you cheat on me?” The words come out before I can stop them. Quiet as a confession. “With Allegra. Did you-”
He stiffens against me, every muscle drawing tight.
“Never.” His voice is flat, total, bedrock. “Never in a million fucking years.”
“There were pictures. Your mother showed me pictures.” I’m crying now, I realize. Not from fear anymore, from a place older and deeper. “You and her. At our lake. At our place. The waterfall in the background, and you were-”
“That never happened.” His hands come up, cup my face, force me to meet his eyes. “Melanie. Listen to me. I’ve never touched Allegra Costa. Not once. Not ever. I don’t even like her. I found her exhausting, and I put up with her because the merger needed her father’s votes-”
“I SAW the photos!”
“Then they were faked.” His voice is fierce. “Same as the papers. Same as everything else that came out of my mother’s mouth. I never took a single photo with that woman. Not even for the company newsletter. Check the records - there’s nothing. Because nothing happened.”
I search his face. Looking for the lie. Looking for the crack.
I don’t find one.
“The lake,” I whisper. “You were at the lake with her-”
“I’ve never been to our lake with anyone but you.” His thumbs brush my cheekbones, wiping at tears I didn’t know were falling. “Not once. That lake is ours, Mel. I wouldn’t share it with anyone.”
“Your mother said-”
“My mother is a monster who would say anything to destroy what we had.” His jaw tightens.
“I know that now. I should have known it then. But I didn’t cheat on you.
I’d never have cheated on you. Least of all with Allegra Costa.
” He makes a face. “It’s actually a bit offensive that you think I have such terrible taste. ”
A sound scrapes up out of me, more sob than laugh.
“But the pregnancy-” I push on. “I heard you in your office. Talking about ‘the baby.’ You told your mother she could keep it. That you weren’t even sure I wanted it-”
“I never knew you were pregnant.” The words tear out of him. “I found out when I saw you here, Mel. When I saw Leo and Junie. That was the first I-” He stops. His face changes. Realization, moving across his features like weather.
“…Fuck.”
“What?”
“The puppy.”
I stare at him. “The what?”
“I wanted to give you a puppy.” His voice is strangled.
“A surprise, for when I got back from Tokyo. It came early - that last morning, before the airport - and my mother was in my office about it, complaining about the work of it, who’d end up looking after the thing.
And I said-” He closes his eyes. “I said she could keep it, then. That I wasn’t even sure you’d want it - a dog, on top of everything, when you’d said the villa already felt like too much house.
I meant the puppy. Because it was a baby dog. ”
The silence stretches.
I take a step back. Process this.
“You called a puppy ‘baby’?” My voice comes out flat.
“It’s a baby dog!”
“YOU CALLED A PUPPY ‘BABY’?!”
“In Italian, it makes more sense-”
“And the rest of it - ‘Melanie isn’t the priority’ - she’d been needling me again about you not trying at her dinners, and I told her my wife wasn’t a priority she got to have opinions on.
That I’d handle my own marriage myself.” His voice cracks.
“I thought I was defending you. I was doing it so badly it sounded like the opposite.”
“Nothing about this makes any sense!” I want to scream.
I want to laugh. I want to strangle someone, probably Vittoria, possibly also this man who apparently speaks in code about dogs.
“I heard you - I heard the whole conversation - and your mother knew I was pregnant, she KNEW, and she told me you were talking about-”
“She knew?”
I nod. The tears are coming faster now.
“She knew. She was the first to know - before I did.” I choke on it.
“She took me to her clinic for ‘tests,’ Santino. Had the results sent straight to her. She knew I was pregnant before I had the first clue. And then she cornered me with Allegra - the photos, the papers with your name on them - and told me your family would raise the baby without me. Supervised visits if I went quietly. Nothing at all if I fought, because I was broke and foreign and you couldn’t stand to be in a room with me, and their lawyers were very good, very expensive, very creative.
Her words. That I was nothing but a harvest worker who’d gotten above her station. ”
His face has gone the color of ash.
“And then I stood outside your door and heard you say ‘keep it.’” The words are acid in my throat. “And your mother had already told me you didn’t want it anyway. That you were starting a real family with Allegra, and my baby would just be an embarrassment. A reminder of your mistake.”
“Mel-”
“I believed her.” I’m shaking now. “I believed all of it. Because you were never there, Santino. You were always working, always traveling, always so focused on the job that you didn’t notice your own family treating me like garbage-”
“When?” His voice cracks. “Tell me when. What did they say?”
“ALL THE TIME!” I round on him, all the rage of three years exploding at once. “It was constant - every dinner, every event, every family gathering. They all thought I didn’t speak Italian, but I DO. I’m fluent. I’ve been fluent since before I met you. And I heard every single word.”
He goes white.
“Every comment about the ‘American gold-digger.’ Every joke about how long I’d last before you got bored. Every time your mother called me la puttana under her breath-” I’m crying so hard I can barely see. “I understood it all, Santino. For three years. And you never defended me. Not once.”
He sinks to his knees.
Right there on my kitchen floor, in his soaked clothes with the storm rolling overhead, he drops like someone cut his strings.
“I didn’t know.” His voice is in pieces. “Mel, I swear to you - I didn’t know they were saying those things. If I had known-”
“You should have NOTICED!” I scream. “You should have seen how they treated me! You should have paid enough attention to your own wife to see that I was drowning!”
“I know.” He doesn’t defend himself. Doesn’t offer excuses.
Just kneels there with tears on his face, looking up at me.
“I was a shitty husband. I let work eat me. I was so absent, so fucking oblivious, that when my mother lied about me - the lies were believable.” His voice breaks.
“That’s on me. That will always be on me. ”
“Yes,” I whisper. “It will.”
“But I never cheated.” He reaches for my hands, and I let him take them.
“I never knew about the pregnancy. I never signed those papers. I never wanted to divorce you. Everything my mother told you was a lie - except for the one thing that was true: I neglected you. I failed you. And you had every reason to run.”
The storm howls outside. Thunder rolls, distant now, moving away.
“I love you,” he says, quiet and fierce.
“I love you, Melanie. I love our twins. I loved our life, and I took it for granted until I lost it. But never again.” His grip tightens on my hands.
“I’ll never take your love for granted again.
I’ll earn it back. Bit by bit. Day by day.
Until you never doubt it - and then I’ll keep earning it anyway. ”
I’m crying so hard I can’t see.
I sink down to the floor with him.
And then I’m hugging him again, both of us kneeling in my kitchen, soaked and broken and holding on like the world is ending.
Because it feels like grief. Like mourning. Like finally laying down a weight I didn’t know I was carrying.
So much had gone wrong.
And so much of it was never even true.