4. Adriana
— · —
Adriana
Months pass, and I start to forget what my father’s house felt like.
The sharp edges of that life have started to blur. The constant vigilance, the way I used to measure every word before I spoke, the knot in my stomach that never quite unwound. Here, in this cold beautiful house that I thought would be my prison, something unexpected has happened.
I’ve started to relax.
Rafael and I have dinner together now. Not every night, but often enough that I’ve stopped being surprised when he shows up in the dining room around seven, loosening his tie, asking what’s for food.
Tonight it’s something the cook made with pasta and too much garlic, and Rafael is telling me about some trip he’s supposed to take next month.
I’m only half listening, watching the way he gestures with his fork when he talks, the way he laughs at his own jokes before he finishes telling them.
He’s not what I expected.
When my father forced me into that dress and pushed me down the aisle, I thought I was walking toward a nightmare.
I thought Rafael would be angry, or cruel, or at best coldly indifferent.
I thought the Vitales would make my life miserable, that I’d spend every day fighting to survive in a house that didn’t want me.
Instead I got this. Separate rooms without having to fight for them. Days spent alone with the piano while the house empties out around me. And Rafael, who never pressures me, never demands anything, never makes me feel like I’m a burden he’s been saddled with.
“You’re not listening,” he says, and I blink.
“Sorry. I was thinking.”
“About what?”
“Nothing important.”
He studies me for a moment, then grins. “You do that a lot. Go somewhere else in your head. What’s it like in there?”
“Quieter than out here.”
He laughs, and I find myself smiling back.
This is new too. The ease between us. The way conversation has started to flow without me having to carefully measure every word.
At my father’s house, dinner was a minefield.
Every sentence had to be weighed for potential offense, every silence stretched taut with the threat of his temper.
Here, Rafael just talks. About nothing, mostly. But the nothing feels safe.
“I meant to tell you,” he says, twirling pasta around his fork. “I heard you playing this afternoon. That new piece you’ve been working on.”
I tense slightly. “Was it too loud? I can close the door if…”
“No, no.” He waves his fork dismissively. “It sounded good. Really good. You’ve been practicing a lot.”
“I have time.”
“You should keep at it. You’re talented.”
I don’t know what to say to that. Compliments still catch me off guard. My father never gave them, and Viviana’s praise always came with a sting in the tail. But Rafael just says things like this and moves on, like it’s obvious, like it doesn’t require any particular response.
“Thank you,” I manage.
He nods and goes back to his pasta, and for a moment I just watch him eat, this man who keeps being kinder than I expected. Something loosens in my chest. A small, frightening urge to give him something back.
“You can call me Ana,” I say. “If you want.”
He glances up. “Isn’t your name Adriana?”
“It is. Ana is just… it’s what people call me. The ones who are close to me.” My face goes warm. It feels like more than a nickname, handing it over like this, and I’m suddenly worried he’ll hear the weight in it. “My mother. Amelia. The people who actually know me.”
For a second I think he might understand what I’m doing. What it costs me.
“Sure,” he says, and shrugs, already looking back down at his plate. “Ana. Works for me.”
That’s it. He doesn’t ask why, doesn’t ask who else, doesn’t seem to notice I just handed him a key to a door almost no one gets through. He just accepts it the way he accepts everything, easily, lightly, like nothing means very much at all.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter. He said yes. That’s what counts.
The conversation drifts to something else.
After dinner, I wander through the house the way I’ve started doing in the evenings.
Past the sitting room with its uncomfortable furniture.
Through the library where I’ve been slowly working my way through the shelves.
Down the hallway toward the piano room, where I’ll probably spend another hour or two before bed.
This has become my routine. My life. And somewhere along the way, without meaning to, I’ve started to feel almost at home here.
The thought stops me in the middle of the hallway.
At home. In the Vitale house. Married to a man I didn’t choose, living a life I never planned for, and against everything I expected, at home.
How did that happen?
I think about my father’s house. The way I used to tiptoe around his moods, the way I learned to make myself small and quiet and invisible. The way Viviana took up all the space and all the attention while I faded into the background, grateful just to be ignored.
Here, being ignored feels different. Here, being left alone feels like freedom instead of neglect.
Dante is at work most of the time. Cecilia is always away, traveling somewhere, attending something, living her own life separate from all of us.
Rafael comes and goes on his own schedule, but when he’s here, he actually talks to me. Actually sees me.
It’s strange. I expected this marriage to be worse than my father’s house, and instead it’s better. Not perfect, not the fairy tale I never let myself dream about, but better. Survivable. Maybe even good.
***
Later, in the piano room, I lose myself in the music the way I always do.
There’s a piece I half-remember from my lessons years ago, something complicated that my fingers keep stumbling over.
I’ve been working on it for weeks, trying to get the timing right, trying to recapture what my old music teacher taught me before my father decided it was a waste of time and money and sold the piano.
I don’t think about those years much. The lessons that stopped without warning, the empty space in the sitting room where the piano used to be, the way music became one more thing I loved that got taken away because my father didn’t see the point.
But here, in this room with its tall windows and its beautiful grand piano, I can play whenever I want. Nobody tells me it’s a waste of time, or that I’m not good enough to go professional so why bother. Nobody takes it away.
I play until my fingers ache, then I play some more.
I’m so focused that I don’t hear Rafael come in until he clears his throat.
I stop playing and turn around.
He’s leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, watching me. There’s something soft in his expression, something I haven’t seen before.
“Don’t stop on my account,” he says.
“I was just practicing.”
“I know. I like listening.” He pushes off from the doorframe and walks over to the piano, sitting down on the bench next to me. Not too close, but close enough that I can smell his cologne. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Do you feel bad? That Viviana ran away?”
The question catches me off guard. I take a moment to think about it, really think, before I answer.
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Part of me does. She was supposed to be here. This was supposed to be her life. But part of me…”
“Part of you what?”
“Part of me understands why she did it. Even if I couldn’t do the same thing.”
He nods slowly, like he’s processing this. “I don’t feel bad,” he says. “In case you were wondering.”
“You don’t?”
“Not really. It’s not like it’s my problem, you know? And you ended up taking her place, so it doesn’t really make a difference to me.”
I should be offended by that, maybe. The casualness of it.
The implication that we’re interchangeable, one sister or the other, what does it matter.
But I don’t think he means it that way. Rafael just says what he thinks without filtering it first. It’s one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about him.
“But don’t you prefer her?” I ask before I can stop myself. “I know you and her have… history.”
“History?” He looks at me, brow furrowed, like he genuinely doesn’t know what I mean.
“You know.” My face goes warm. “You two used to… hook up. Before any of this.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He says it like I’ve reminded him where he left his keys. “We did, on and off. Never anything exclusive, though. Viv’s fun to hang out with, we’ve always kind of run in the same circles, same idea of a good time.” He shrugs. “But it’s not like I like her or anything. It was never that.”
“But she’s the better sister, anyway,” I say. “She’s beautiful. Charming. She knows how to work a room. Everyone always preferred her.”
“I don’t.”
I stare at him. “Everyone prefers Viviana. That’s just how it’s always been.”
“No.” He shrugs again, like this is obvious. “Viv’s exhausting, honestly. Always needing attention, always needing to be the center of everything.” He pauses, considering. “You’re way better than her.”
My heart does something strange in my chest. A flutter, a skip. Something I haven’t felt in a long time.
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I’m not just saying it. I mean it.” He bumps his shoulder against mine, gentle. “You’re easy to be around. You don’t make everything about you. And you’re talented, with the piano and stuff. Viv never had anything like that. She just had her face.”
I don’t know what to say. Nobody has ever compared me to Viviana and found her wanting. Nobody has ever looked at the two of us and chosen me.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“You’re welcome.” He stands up, stretching. “I’m going to bed. You should too, eventually. Don’t stay up all night playing that thing.”
“I won’t.”
He heads for the door, and I watch him go, still processing what just happened.
You’re way better than her.
He said it like it was nothing. Like it was obvious. Like he couldn’t understand why I would ever think otherwise.
I sit at the piano for a long time after he’s gone, not playing, just thinking.
***
The next morning, I wake up earlier than usual.
I lie in bed watching the light change on the ceiling, thinking about Rafael’s words. About the way he looked at me when he said them. About what it might mean, if it means anything at all.
We’ve been married for seven months now. Seven months of separate rooms and careful distance. Seven months of polite dinners and casual conversations and nothing more than pecks on the cheek, brief touches of hands.
He’s never pressured me. Not once. When I asked for a separate room that first night, he just shrugged and said do whatever you want.
When I kept my distance, stayed in my own space, retreated to the piano whenever things felt too close, he let me.
He never pushed, never demanded, never made me feel like I owed him anything.
“I mean, you got thrown suddenly into this situation,” he said once, when I worked up the courage to ask about it. “I know you’d need time to adjust or whatever.”
Time to adjust. Like he understood, without me having to explain, that I wasn’t ready. That this marriage wasn’t something I chose, and he wasn’t going to force me to pretend otherwise.
At the time, I was grateful. Relieved. Safe.
But now I find myself wondering. What if I’m ready now? What if I want more than polite dinners and separate rooms?
Rafael could be nice. He is nice. He doesn’t belittle me the way my father and Viviana always did, he listens when I talk, he compliments my piano playing. He told me I was beautiful once, when I got dressed up for a dinner with some of his friends, and I almost didn’t know how to respond.
Nobody had ever called me beautiful before. Not when they could have been talking about Viviana instead.
Maybe this marriage doesn’t have to be just survival. Maybe it can be something real.
The thought terrifies me, but it also feels like hope.
So I decide. Tonight.
When Rafael gets home, I’m going to tell him the truth. That I don’t want to keep living like roommates who pass each other in the hallway. That I want this to be real, all of it, the shared bed and the shared life and the version of us I’ve only let myself imagine in the dark. That I’m ready.
I’m meeting Amelia for brunch first, because if I don’t say it out loud to someone before I say it to him, I’ll lose my nerve. She’ll talk me through it. She always does.
Then I’ll come home, and I’ll find my husband, and I’ll stop being a coward about my own life.
Tonight, I tell him everything.