CHAPTER 13
"There are fires you light without a match—and those are exactly the ones no one puts out."
VALENTINA ROSSI
I came down the west-wing stairs slowly.
I'd changed clothes beforehand—a light navy-blue linen dress, sleeveless, calf-length, with low leather sandals.
I left my hair down for the first time in three weeks. I didn't put on makeup or strong perfume—just a touch of jasmine on my wrist.
I looked at myself in the bedroom mirror before going down and almost recognized myself.
Almost.
There was something new in my eyes that hadn't been there when I arrived in Posillipo.
Something that looked like resolve, something that looked like hunger.
I crossed the grand salon and the east hallway. I'd told Bianca I'd come back to the music room at eleven the next day, but I wasn't going to the music room.
I knew where Luca was, because Donna Beatrice had let it slip, with the same calculated indifference as the morning before, that the padrone had asked for lunch to be served on the south terrace at twelve-thirty.
I had twenty minutes to settle something that couldn't wait.
I crossed the grand salon and went out through the double doors that opened onto the back gardens. The June sun hit my face—warm, not yet brutal.
And there he was.
Standing on the south terrace, both hands resting on the stone wall overlooking the bay, no jacket, a white long-sleeved shirt with the first two buttons open, sleeves already rolled to the elbow, looking at the sea.
He heard me coming, but didn't turn around.
"You came down early," he said.
"I came down right on time."
Then he turned around.
He took three seconds to look at me, head to foot, unhurried, with the attention of someone seeing a painting for the first time.
"You finally came back."
"I came back yesterday."
"You came back just now."
And he was right.
I walked to the wall and stopped a yard from him, resting my hands on the stone. I looked out at the bay too—because it was easier to talk to him without facing him.
"I talked to Bianca."
"I saw."
"You saw?"
"From the office window. I didn't hear, but I saw. What did you say to her?"
I looked at him for the first time that morning. His profile cut against the blue of the sea—the scar through his eyebrow, his jaw, the angle of his neck where the open collar showed his tanned skin.
"I said something I can't tell you yet."
"You're learning the game, bella."
"I always knew it. I just hadn't played yet."
"And now?"
"Now I'm playing."
He turned his body toward me and leaned his hip against the wall, crossing his arms.
"For me or for you?"
I thought for two seconds.
"For me. But it's possible this benefits you."
"I see."
"Possible."
"Bella," he said, low. "Come with me."
"Where to?"
"Walk with me." He held out his arm, without quite touching me. "I'll show you the arbor."
"The arbor?"
"The old vine, the first one my great-grandfather planted. It's in the south corner of the vineyard. I go there when I need to think."
"And do you need to think now?"
"You just told me you're playing for yourself. I need to do a lot of thinking, bella."
I put my hand on his forearm. Without ceremony, without caution, feeling the heat of his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt.
"Andiamo."
The arbor was about two hundred yards from the house, down the slope of the vineyard by a side path I hadn't come across on my night escape.
An old stone path, with cypress on one side and vineyard on the other, descending slowly to a covered area—a dark wood structure, the kind from the last century, with vines climbing the pillars and forming a green roof so dense it filtered the sun into golden stripes on the ground.
Under the arbor there was a stone bench. Old, marked, smooth from so much use.
Then we sat down, me on one side, him on the other. But the arbor was narrow—so was the bench.
"Tell me," he said.
"Tell you what?"
"What you found out in Palermo."
"I already told you I can't tell you yet."
"Bella." He leaned forward a little, resting his elbows on his knees. "I'm not asking to coerce you. I'm asking because I want to know."
"What's the difference?"
"The difference is that coercion is what I did to you two weeks ago. A request is what I'm doing now."
I looked at him.
The light filtered through the arbor hit his face in uneven stripes. The scar through his eyebrow was in shadow, his black eyes weren't.
"Why did you change?" I asked.
"Because you came back."
"Was leaving Palermo all it took for you to change?"
"It took you leaving Palermo for me to realize I'd already changed."
I swallowed hard, with no answer.
"Luca. This isn't easy for me."
"I'm not trying to make it easy for you."
"You are."
Then he laughed, surprised, the way he'd smiled in the vineyard that first late night, as if I'd caught him somewhere he hadn't expected.
"Maybe it's coming out that way, but it's not strategy, bella. I've already tried strategies with you. It didn't work."
"It worked."
"No." He looked at me for real now. "It didn't work, because if it had, you wouldn't be here now sitting beside me under my great-grandfather's arbor—you'd be upstairs packing to go back to Bologna."
"I thought about it."
"I know. I always knew, Valentina. You think I didn't see the acceptance letter folded in your suitcase?"
My breath stopped.
"You searched my bags?"
"Not personally, but I gave the order."
"Cazzo, Luca."
"I know."
"You're despicable."
"Sì."
The repetition of that word—the simple sì, with no defense, the one he'd used three days ago to admit he was despicable—made me stop.
I couldn't hold on to the anger anymore. That was the worst part—it was exactly what had bothered me about him from the first day.
I couldn't hate a person who admitted things.
"Why did you search them?"
"Because I needed to know if you were going to try to run. The letter was still in the Calvino when it went to Palermo. I asked them not to take it out. Just to check."
"Why did you ask them to leave it?"
"Because it was yours."
He leaned in a little more, and his knee touched mine for the first time.
"Bella. Look at me."
I looked. His eyes were closer than I'd calculated.
Inches.
The arbor stirred—wind—and a stripe of sun passed over his face and disappeared again.
"I don't know what's happening to me. I know what should be happening. It should be strategy, plan, calculation. But it isn't, and I can't decide whether that worries me, or whether what worries me is the fact that I'm not worried enough."
"You talk too beautifully to be sincere."
"I talk beautifully because I'm sincere. Someone who tells the truth can afford the luxury."
"Luca…"
He raised his hand slowly. I saw the gesture coming, I had time to pull back, but I didn't.
His hand touched my chin, lifting my face an inch or two closer to his. The scar through his eyebrow now clearly visible, under the yellow light filtered through the arbor. The smell—cigar, whiskey, and that smell I still hadn't named and that I now knew was him.
I felt his thumb move up, slowly, and stop at the corner of my mouth.
He didn't kiss me, just stopped there, looking at me, and waited.
And I—because I was still the Valentina of the convent underneath all this new woman's flesh that had come to Posillipo, because I was still Salvatore Rossi's daughter, because I was still Matteo's sister, because I still had Francesca's letter burning in the inner pocket of the coat up in my room, with the line she'd written me, don't mistake the fire for the smoke—I closed my hand slowly around his bracelet, drawing his hand away from my face.
Not abruptly, but with care, like someone turning off a flame.
"No," I said.
"Why not, bella?"
"Because if I let you kiss me now, I won't be able to ask you tomorrow what I need to ask you."
"Which would be...?"
"Who killed my brother."
He stopped and looked at the stone floor between us, very slowly.
"Capisco."
"Capisco—really, Luca?"
"Yes."
"You'll wait for me."
"I'll wait for you."
I stood up very slowly and looked at him one last time before going back up the path.
"Luca. I'm going to come back to this arbor."
"When?"
"When I've asked the right question."
I went back up the path without looking back, walking to the house with my heart beating in my neck, my collarbone, my wrists, in all the places where a woman realizes she has blood.
And for the first time in three weeks, I didn't know whether the hunger was hatred or something else.