6. Kylie #2
The speech ended. More applause. Giovanni made his way back to the table, accepting handshakes and congratulations along the way. When he sat down, he leaned toward me, actually leaned past Bianca for once, and lowered his voice.
“Hey.” He reached for my hand under the table. “You were right, I should have-”
His phone buzzed.
Not in his pocket, in Bianca’s hand, because she was still carrying it, because of course she was.
She appeared at his elbow instantly, tears threatening at the corners of her eyes. Perfect timing. Perfect performance.
“Giovanni, I’m so sorry, but there’s - it’s about the Calabrese situation, there’s been a development, and I didn’t want to interrupt but Dante says it’s urgent, and I know this is Kylie’s night but-”
Giovanni let go of my hand.
Mid-sentence. Mid-apology. Whatever he’d been about to say, whatever acknowledgment he’d been about to offer, evaporated as he stood up.
“I’ll just be a minute,” he said, already turning to follow her toward the hallway.
I watched them go. Watched her hand find the small of his back as she guided him toward the door. Watched him not look back.
Then I got up and walked out, past the tables, past the whispers, to the ladies’ room, where I finally stopped holding my face together.
It was empty, thank God. Cream marble and gilt mirrors and the cloying smell of expensive lilies.
I gripped the cold edge of the counter and let my head drop and cried, hot and humiliating, the mascara be damned.
He had stood up in front of everyone who knew us and given another woman the credit for holding his life together.
A woman in diamonds hadn’t been able to tell which one of us was his wife.
And he had let go of my hand, mid-apology, the instant she crooked a finger.
How could he. The question went around and around, childish and useless and completely true. How could he not see it. See me.
I gave it ninety seconds. That was all he got. Then I looked up at the woman in the mirror, red-eyed and furious and finished with being furniture, and I wiped the black from under my eyes, and I decided that if my husband had nothing worth saying at his own gala, I did.
I walked back into the ballroom with my chin level and my heels loud.
“Excuse me,” I said to no one in particular, and walked to the podium.
The speech I gave wasn’t the speech I’d prepared.
I’d written something polite. Something about the importance of history, the value of preservation, the gratitude we all felt toward our generous donors. Standard gala fare. Inoffensive. Forgettable.
Instead, I talked about what it meant to build something.
“These buildings we’re trying to save,” I said, “they weren’t built by accident. Someone designed every window, every doorframe, every tile in every bathroom. Someone spent years learning how to do it right. Someone poured their whole life into creating something that was supposed to last.”
The room had gone quiet. I could feel every eye in the room on me, waiting.
“That’s what preservation is really about. Not just the buildings themselves, but the faith that created them. The belief that what we make matters. That it will outlast us. That someone, someday, will look at what we built and understand what we were trying to say.”
I made them laugh. Made them cry. Got them to open their checkbooks one more time, bidding on auction items they didn’t need, donating amounts they hadn’t planned to.
The gala raised more money than any year before.
When it was over, when the last guest had filtered out and the last handshake had been exchanged. I walked out through the wrong doors.
Not the side exit where the valet had my car. The front. The main entrance, where the second seating was arriving for another event, where everyone who would ever lunch in this city would see the donna emerge alone. My worst moment, witnessed.
I didn’t care anymore.
***
Giovanni was in the study when I got back to the brownstone.
The door was open, which meant he was expecting me. The lamp on his desk cast a warm circle of light, leaving the rest of the room in shadow. He was standing by the window, looking out at the street, his jacket draped over the chair and his sleeves rolled up.
I didn’t knock. Just walked in and stopped in the center of the room.
“Kylie.” He turned. His face was arranged in an expression I’d seen before, the one he used when he knew he’d done something wrong but wasn’t entirely sure what. “I’m sorry I had to leave. The Calabrese situation-”
“Three years.”
“What?”
“I’ve chaired that gala for three years.
I’ve built it from nothing. It is the one piece of my career I was allowed to keep.
” My voice held. Calm. The calm of someone who had made a decision.
“And tonight you got up in front of everyone in that ballroom who knows us and thanked her for holding your life together.”
“I thanked a lot of people-”
“You didn’t thank me.”
The words hung in the air, and there was no taking them back.
Giovanni ran a hand through his hair. “I wasn’t thinking. The notes she prepared - she put her name in there, I didn’t even-”
“The notes she prepared.”
“She was trying to help-”
“She moved into my chair at the family dinner.” I started counting on my fingers, each accusation a year of grievances finally given voice.
“She took my seat. She’s in your study every day.
She wore my apron. She made our sugo. She stood in my kitchen with her hands on your grandmother’s recipe card, and you taught her the thing you taught me - the one thing that was supposed to be ours - and when I walked in you said it was just cooking. ”
“Kylie-”
“And tonight you left me standing at my own gala, alone, because she said Dante needed you.”
He stood slowly. Came closer, close enough to catch his cologne, the one I’d bought him for our first anniversary, the one he wore now because she’d told him it suited him.
“Bianca is grieving.” His voice was patient.
Reasonable. The tone of a man explaining something obvious to someone who should already understand.
“You know what her father did for this family. Tommaso took the bullet that was meant for mine. Making sure his daughter feels welcome under this roof is the least of what we owe him. She has no one, Kylie. No one but us.”
“And what about me?”
“What about you?”
The question landed like a blow.
“What about your wife?” I stepped back. Created distance. “The woman who has spent three years trying to matter to you? Who gave up her career for you? Who has smiled and nodded and played her part perfectly while you-”
“While I what?”
“While you treated me like furniture.”
He stared at me. Something flickered in his eyes, confusion, maybe. Or maybe just annoyance at being confronted with a problem he didn’t know how to solve.
“One more thing.” I heard my own voice like it was coming from somewhere else, somewhere far away. “One more thing, Giovanni. The next time you choose her over me. The next meal or meeting or minute where she matters more than your wife. And I’m gone.”
The words sat between us and refused to move.
“You don’t mean that.” He said it like a fact, not a question. Like my leaving was simply not a possibility he needed to consider.
“Try me.”
I turned and walked out. Through the door, down the hall, up the stairs. My heels were loud on the marble, each step an announcement. A warning. A countdown.
I was almost to the guest suite when I felt it.
That prickle at the back of your neck. The one that means someone is watching.
I looked up.
At the top of the stairs, half-hidden in shadow, a figure stood at the railing. She must have been there the whole time, must have heard every word I’d said, every ultimatum I’d issued, every piece of ammunition I’d handed her.
Bianca.
Her face was tilted toward the study where my words were still settling. And as I watched, her lips curved slowly upward.
She smiled.
The smile of a woman checking items off a list.