CHAPTER 8
"There are books you take down from the high shelf because you want to read them—and there are books someone left up there because they wanted you to reach for them."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I woke at six thirty, put on black linen pants, a white cotton blouse, and pinned my hair into a low bun.
No makeup. No perfume. No red.
I went down and crossed the silent house—only a maid wiping down the marble hallway, who lowered her eyes when I passed. I looked for the library. It was in the east wing, behind a set of dark mahogany double doors with a bronze handle.
The whole house was a museum, but the library was a cathedral.
Twenty-foot ceilings. Shelves from floor to ceiling covering all four walls.
A bronze ladder on a rail, the kind that slides from one side of the room to the other.
A big desk in the center, facing a tall window that looked out over the vineyard.
The smell of old leather, old paper, and cigar—always cigar, in every room of that house, as if the Moretti men had smoked so much over four generations that the wood itself breathed it.
I closed the door behind me.
"Good morning, library," I whispered.
I started with the shelf closest to the window.
"You're up early, cognatina."
I jumped, and almost dropped the book in my hand.
Raffaele was leaning against the door frame—how long, I didn't know. Navy shirt, no jacket, a cup of coffee in his hand.
"Cazzo, Raffaele."
He came in, walking slowly to the desk in the center, then sat on the edge of it and took a sip of coffee while he watched me.
"Looking for something?"
"Reading."
"Old Italian, page twenty-two, and you never even opened it."
I looked at the book in my hand. He was right—it was a commercial-law treatise from some century I had no intention of figuring out. I closed it and put it back on the shelf.
"Yes, I'm looking for something."
"Brava." He smiled. "Looking for what?"
"A Moretti family photo. The nineties or the two-thousands. Summer on Capri, with you in the corner looking like a kid."
"You won't find it here, cognatina. Family photos are in my brother's office."
"You know I'm not going back there anytime soon."
"Ah." He looked at me more closely. "So it's true. You two fought yesterday."
"The house talks?"
"The house whispers." He took another sip. "Donna Beatrice told Lina, Lina told the driver, the driver told the gate guard, the gate guard told me at breakfast. In a family home you know everything in forty minutes."
"How efficient."
"Sì." He set the cup down on the desk. "Let's take this one piece at a time. Why do you want a Capri photo?"
I had two options: either I lied and lost him, or I told half the truth and found out what he'd give me back.
"Because my brother spent his summers here. I didn't know that, and that's why I want to see the photos."
"You want to see photos of your brother?"
"Yes."
He looked at me in silence, longer than was natural.
"Valentina. Tell me something," he said very slowly. "Who told you Matteo spent summers on Capri?"
"Luca."
"And what else did he tell you?"
"Why?"
"Because I want to know what he told you and what he didn't."
Now it was my turn to look at him in silence.
"Why would you tell me the part he didn't?"
"Maybe I won't." He smiled. "But you want to tell me anyway. I can see it on your face."
I swallowed hard. He was right.
"He told me Matteo stopped going to Capri in 2015. He didn't tell me why."
"Allora." He got up from the desk and picked up the cup, coming over to the shelf where I was and stopping beside me. "The nonna knows."
"Your grandmother?"
"Mia nonna. Adelina. She lives on Capri. She's coming to the wedding." He glanced at me sideways. "But if you wait until the wedding to ask, she'll already have been coached on what to say and what not to say. Capisci?"
"Capisco."
"You have to go before then."
"How do I get to Capri before then?"
He smiled.
"With luck and patience, cognatina." He looked at the shelf behind me and pointed up high. "By the way, look at that blue book, three shelves from the top. Family memoirs, written by my great-grandfather. There are some photos in it."
I looked up and saw the book was about ten feet up.
"I can't reach it."
"I can."
He set the cup on the desk and reached up, his arm passing close to my head. He took the blue book off the shelf. When he lowered his arm, he had the book in his right hand and his shoulder was close to mine.
"Ecco." He held it out to me.
I took it.
And in that exact second, exactly when my hand touched his around the book, the library door opened.
Luca stopped in the doorway and looked at the two of us.
I watched him read it in three split seconds—he saw Raffaele behind me, saw the book between us, saw Raffaele's hand touching mine. He said nothing for two seconds. When he spoke, his voice had that calm that was worse than a shout.
"Good morning."
"Good morning, fratello," Raffaele said, not moving from behind me, in no hurry at all.
"You're busy, I see."
"Getting a book down from up high. Cognatina's short."
I took a step forward and held the book against my chest.
"Good morning, Luca."
He looked at me, but didn't answer my good morning.
"Raffaele. You have a nine o'clock with Acquaviva."
"I have a ten o'clock with Acquaviva."
"You had. He just called me and moved it up."
Raffaele looked at me, then at his brother.
"Allora." He took his cup from the desk. "I'll leave you with great-grandfather's Tolstoy, cognatina."
He left and passed Luca in the doorway. The two of them exchanged a look I couldn't read.
Now it was just the two of us in the library.
Luca came in and closed the door behind him with his left hand, without turning to look at what he was doing. Then he came to the desk in the center. Not toward me—toward the desk. Then he rested both hands on the edge.
"What are you doing, Valentina?"
"Reading your great-grandfather's memoirs. You could have brought me that photo yesterday."
"I could have."
"Why didn't you?"
He looked up.
"Because yesterday I was giving you one truth at a time. And you couldn't wait for the next one."
"You think I shouldn't have opened the envelope."
"I think you opened the envelope when the wrong person wanted you to."
He came to where I was and stopped in front of me—not too close, but close enough that I had to lift my chin. Then he looked at the book against my chest.
"Read the book, bella. I won't stop you."
He reached out and laid his fingers on my shoulder, squeezing it for a second.
"If I see my brother behind you in a bookcase again," he said quietly, in my ear, no mockery, no charm, with the clean coldness of the Don, "he sleeps in Rome this week. Chiaro?"
I didn't answer.
He left the library without waiting for an answer, and I stood in the middle of the cathedral of books, holding his great-grandfather's memoirs against my chest.
And I realized, with a cold anger, that the shoulder where his fingers had rested for a second—still burned.