2. Ariah #2
Serena laughs - a pretty, tinkling sound that makes me want to throw my coffee cup at the wall. “She’s philosophical, Rosaria. You didn’t tell me she was philosophical.”
“Ariah is many things.” Rosaria’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes. It never does, when she looks at me. “Resilient, certainly. She’s had to be.”
I know what she means. I’ve always known what she means - that I’m the unwanted foreign wife who somehow clawed her way into her son’s life and refuses to have the grace to disappear. That I should be grateful for everything I’ve been given, even as she works systematically to take it away.
The visit stretches another excruciating twenty minutes. By the time they leave, I have a headache building behind my eyes and a pit in my stomach that feels like swallowed glass.
I find the twins in the kitchen with Rosa, eating apple slices and studiously avoiding the letters Lucy is technically supposed to be practicing. When they see me, Lucy slides off her chair and wraps her arms around my legs with force.
“Mama.” Her voice is muffled against my hip. “I didn’t like them.”
“I know, piccola.”
“The pretty lady has mean eyes.”
“Lucy…”
“She does.” Luca is certain about this, the way only four-year-olds can be certain. “And Nonna always makes you sad.”
I crouch down so I’m at their eye level, these beautiful, perceptive children who see more than I ever wanted them to see. Lucy’s thumb is back in her mouth, and Luca is watching me with an expression far too serious for his age.
“Nonna and I are just different people,” I say carefully. “We don’t always understand each other.”
“Because she’s mean to you?”
“Because…” I search for words that are honest without being damaging, that acknowledge their instincts without poisoning them against their grandmother. “Because she wanted your papa to marry someone different than me, and she’s still getting used to the fact that he didn’t.”
Lucy considers this, thumb still planted. “Did Papa want to marry someone different?”
The question hits me somewhere soft and undefended. Did he? Does he? In the early hours when he can’t sleep, when he walks through this house like he’s looking for something he’s lost, does he wish he’d made a different choice?
“Your papa chose me,” I say finally. “And I chose him. That’s what matters.”
Lucy doesn’t look convinced, but she lets me change the subject. I send them off to the playroom and stay in the kitchen, standing at the window, looking out at the water while Rosa moves quietly behind me, tidying things that don’t need tidying.
“That woman,” Rosa says eventually. “The Salerno one.”
“Yes?”
“Pretty face.” Rosa’s mouth presses into a thin line. “Cold eyes. Cold heart, I think. I’ve seen her type before.”
“You’ve met her before?”
“No. But I know the Signora. I know what kind of people she chooses. And that one…” Rosa shakes her head. “That one wants something she doesn’t have.”
I think of the way Serena looked at my children. The way she looked at me. The careful satisfaction when I reacted to her barbs.
“What do you think she wants?” I ask, though I’m afraid I already know.
Rosa meets my eyes with fifteen years of Grimaldi household wisdom in her gaze. “What do women like that ever want, Signora? What someone else has.”
She returns to her tidying, leaving me at the window with my cold coffee and my colder certainty.
That evening, I wait for Pietro to come home.
I wait for him to mention the visit, to acknowledge that his mother brought his new “partner” into our home to parade her in front of me.
I wait for him to see the tension in my shoulders, the way I’m holding myself together with nothing but spite and good posture.
He arrives at eight-thirty, tired and distracted, and kisses my cheek absently while already scrolling through something on his phone.
“Good day?” he asks.
“Your mother came by. With Serena.”
“Oh good.” He doesn’t look up. “I’m glad you got to meet her. She’s going to be crucial for the launch - really has a gift for this kind of work.”
“She seems very… invested.”
“She’s professional. Mother found a good partner.” He glances up finally, and something in my expression must register because he sets the phone down. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Ariah.”
“It’s nothing, Pietro.” I’m lying again. I’m always lying, these days, in small ways and large ones, because telling the truth would require acknowledging how far apart we’ve drifted, and I’m not ready to look at that directly. “I’m glad the launch is coming together. Really.”
He watches me for a moment longer, and I think - I hope - he’s going to push. Going to ask what’s really wrong. Going to see me the way he used to, back before the company swallowed him whole.
“Okay,” he says instead, and picks his phone back up. “I’m going back to the office for a bit, some calls I need to make. Don’t wait up.”
He’s out the door five minutes later, and I stand in the foyer listening to his car disappear down the drive, and I think: Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll tell him how this felt. Tomorrow I’ll make him see.
But tomorrow comes, and Serena is fixed at Pietro’s side for work, in every room, at every meeting, and I’m still standing outside looking in.
The launch descends on this house like weather, and by the end of the week, I’ve been so thoroughly edged out I might as well be furniture.