15. Ariah
— ? —
Ariah
The fear doesn’t go away, so I do the only thing I know how to do with fear: I work.
For three nights straight, I stay up past midnight at my makeshift workstation, refining Valentina’s design, losing myself in the precision of metalwork and the satisfaction of creating something beautiful out of raw materials.
It’s not healthy, probably. Piper keeps giving me worried looks and leaving snacks I forget to eat but it’s better than lying awake cataloging all the ways Rosaria could destroy me.
On the fourth night, Pietro arrives for his visitation.
We’ve worked out an arrangement over text. Clinical, formal, nothing like the way married people are supposed to communicate.
He comes to my apartment on Tuesday and Saturday evenings, spends three hours with the twins, and leaves without crossing any of the boundaries I’ve drawn around my heart.
So far it’s worked, mostly because I’ve made sure to be busy in another room whenever he’s here, emerging only to say goodbye to the children before they go to bed.
Tonight, though, I’m in the middle of a delicate soldering operation when he knocks, and I can’t stop without ruining the piece.
“Door’s open,” I call out, not looking up from my work.
I hear him enter, hear the twins’ excited screams of “Papa! Papa!” as they launch themselves at him, hear the low rumble of his voice as he greets them.
Part of me wants to watch, wants to see him being the father he should have been all along but I keep my eyes on the metal, on the flame, on the careful work of joining two pieces together.
“Ariah.” His voice comes from the doorway of my tiny workspace, which is really just a corner of the living room I’ve claimed with a folding table and a lamp. “Should I…”
“Take them to their room. Their pajamas are laid out. Luca gets a story first, then Lucy - she likes to be last. And Luca’s already had his snack, so no matter what he says, he doesn’t need another one.”
“Okay.” A pause. “Are you…”
“I’m working. Go.”
He goes.
I work.
The sounds of my husband parenting drift in from the other room.
Splashing from the bath, Lucy’s laughter at something he said, Luca’s high voice demanding “again, again!” after what must be a tickle attack. It’s strange, hearing domesticity from the outside, being aware of it happening but not being part of it.
For six years I was the one doing all of this alone, and now here he is, finally showing up, and I don’t know what to do with that.
I finish the soldering and move on to polishing, losing myself in the rhythmic motion of cloth against metal.
The piece is starting to take shape. A pendant that incorporates the helix motif Valentina loved, with space for a small stone at the center.
It’s good work. Maybe the best work I’ve done in years.
“They’re asleep.”
I look up, startled. Pietro is standing in the doorway again, and behind him the apartment is quiet in that particular way that means children have finally surrendered to unconsciousness.
“Both of them?”
“Both of them. Lucy insisted on three stories, but I held firm at two.”
“She always does that. She’s testing you.”
“I know.” He almost smiles. “I remember. From before.”
The before hangs between us, heavy with everything it contains - the years he was present, the years he wasn’t, the slow erosion of a marriage that once felt like it could survive anything.
“Thank you,” I say, because it seems like the thing to say. “For handling bedtime.”
“Thank you for letting me be here.” He takes a step into the room, then stops, like he’s not sure he’s allowed. “Can I… is it okay if I stay for a minute? I won’t bother you. I just…”
“What?”
“I like watching you work.” He says it simply, without artifice. “I always did. You get this look on your face, like nothing else exists. I used to watch you for hours, back when we were first married. Before everything got so complicated.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I don’t say anything.
I go back to polishing, and he settles into the worn armchair that Piper usually claims, and for a long moment there’s just the sound of my work and his breathing and the strange, fragile peace of two people existing in the same space without fighting.
“I talked to my mother,” he says eventually. “About what happened at the restaurant.”
My hands still. “And?”
“I’ve revoked her visitor access to the children.
Formally. Through our lawyers. Same for Serena.
” He meets my eyes. “Rosa and anyone else who might be caring for the twins has been notified. No contact without your explicit approval. And if either of them wants to communicate with you about anything, it goes through counsel first.”
I stare at him. This is different from his usual promises. This is action.
“You actually did that.”
“I should have done it before the restaurant.” His jaw tightens. “I kept thinking I could talk to her, reason with her. That’s over now.” His voice is hard in a way I’ve rarely heard. “She tried to take my children from their mother. She tried to use them as leverage. That’s unforgivable.”
“She’s your mother.”
“And you’re…” He stops, swallows. “You’re the mother of my children. You’re the woman I married. You’re the woman I failed, over and over again, and I am trying - I am trying so hard to be different. To be better. To be the man you deserved all along.”
I don’t want to hear this. I don’t want to feel the pull of it. My hands move faster on the polishing cloth, pressing harder than necessary, focusing on the metal because focusing on his face is too dangerous.
“There’s tea on the counter,” he says after a moment.
“What?”
“I made tea. After the kids were out of the bath. It’s probably still warm.” He pauses. “I know you prefer tea to coffee, in the evenings. With honey, not sugar. And you like the mug with the blue rim because it holds heat longer.”
I stare at him.
The blue mug. The honey. The specific way I take my tea in the evenings, a preference I’ve never told him about directly because I never thought he was paying attention.
“How do you know that?”
“I watched you.” His voice is quiet, almost ashamed.
“For six years, I watched you. I just… didn’t do anything about what I saw.
I let you carry everything alone, and I told myself it was because you wanted to, because you were capable, because you didn’t need me.
But the truth is I was a coward. I was afraid that if I looked too closely, I’d see how badly I was failing you. ”
I don’t say anything. I can’t.
He stands, moving toward the door. “I should go. You’re working, and I’ve…”
“The tea.” My voice comes out strange. “You made it the way I like it?”
“Yes.”
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything about you, Ariah.” He pauses in the doorway, and his face in the dim light is open and raw and nothing like the polished businessman who stood on a stage with another woman on his arm.
“I just forgot to show you that I was paying attention. And by the time I realized what I’d lost, you were already gone. ”
“That’s very convenient,” I say, and I mean it to come out cold, but it doesn’t quite. “Remembering everything now that I’m not there to see it.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Do you? Because it sounds like a man who’s very good at saying the right things when it’s too late.”
He almost flinches. Good. But then he does something unexpected - he laughs, soft and rueful. “You always could cut right through me. I used to hate that, you know. How you never let me get away with anything.”
“And now?”
“Now I think it might be the thing I miss most.”
I don’t want that to land the way it does. I don’t want to feel the warmth spreading through my chest, or notice the way he’s leaning slightly toward me, or remember what it felt like when we used to talk like this - sharp and honest and actually seeing each other.
“Go home, Pietro.”
“I’m going.” But he doesn’t move yet. “The tea’s getting cold.”
“Then I’d better drink it before it’s ruined.”
“That would be a shame. I put a lot of effort into that tea.”
“Boiling water and a tea bag?”
“The honey ratio is very precise.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. I won’t give him that. Not yet.
He leaves without waiting for a response.
I sit at my worktable for a long time, the piece forgotten in front of me, listening to the sound of his car pulling away.
Then I get up and walk to the kitchen, and there on the counter is a mug with a blue rim, still warm, with tea made exactly the way I like it.
I wrap my hands around it and feel the heat seeping into my palms, and something dangerous stirs in my chest.
Something that feels like softening, like forgiveness, like the first crack in a wall I built to protect myself.
I can’t afford this. I can’t afford to feel this way, not when everything is still so fragile, not when his mother is circling like a vulture and my whole future depends on staying strong.
But I drink the tea anyway, standing in my tiny kitchen in my rented apartment, and I hate how good it tastes.
I hate how much I want to believe he’s changed.