5. Cielo
— ? —
Cielo
The reprieve lasts exactly four days.
Four days of Giovanni coming home before midnight, of dinners we actually eat together, of his hand finding mine across the table like it used to.
Four days of the man I married showing up in the body that’s been haunting this house, and I let myself believe it - I let myself sink into the warmth of it like a bath I’d been denied for weeks.
Then the phone rings on day five, and I watch his face change as he listens, watch the softness drain out of him like water through a cracked cup. He’s sorry, he says. It’s urgent. One more meeting, just one, and then-
I stop listening after “urgent.” I’ve learned that word. It means I’ll be eating alone again.
* * *
The sickness starts the morning after he disappears back into his mission.
At first I blame the fish from dinner, then the wine, then the stress of being married to a man who treats me like a hotel room he checks into between flights.
But the nausea keeps coming - every morning, reliable as the tide, dragging me out of sleep and into the bathroom before I can even open my eyes properly.
By the third day, I’m counting backward on the calendar with my coffee going cold beside me, and the number I land on makes my stomach drop in a way that has nothing to do with morning sickness.
Ten weeks. Give or take.
“No,” I say out loud to the empty kitchen, as if the word can change the math. “No, no, no.”
But the math doesn’t care what I want. The math just sits there, implacable, while I press my hand against my stomach and try to remember the last time Giovanni and I were together before this disastrous trip - a stolen weekend in Milan, rushed and hungry, both of us too desperate to be careful.
I need a test. I need to know for certain before I let myself spiral any further into panic or hope or whatever this tangled feeling is that’s lodging itself beneath my ribs.
* * *
The village pharmacy is small and crowded, wedged between a butcher shop and a café that smells aggressively of espresso.
I’ve been here twice before - once for sunscreen, once for the headache medicine that Giovanni’s constant absences have made a necessity - but today the walk feels longer, the door heavier, the fluorescent lights more glaring.
The pharmacist is a middle-aged woman with reading glasses perched on her nose and the kind of knowing look that makes me want to turn around and leave. But I don’t. I walk up to the counter and ask for what I need in Italian that comes out steadier than I feel.
“Un test di gravidanza, per favore.”
She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t judge, or at least doesn’t show it. Just reaches behind her to a shelf I can’t see and produces a slim box that she slides across the counter like it’s nothing, like it isn’t potentially the most important object I’ve ever held.
“Questo è affidabile,” she says. “Risultati in tre minuti.”
“Grazie.”
I pay in cash because I’m not thinking clearly enough to do anything else, and I shove the box into my bag like I’m hiding evidence. Which I suppose I am. Evidence of a future I’m not prepared for, growing inside me whether I’m ready or not.
* * *
Back at the villa, I lock myself in the bathroom and read the instructions twice, even though they’re simple enough that a child could follow them.
My hands are shaking as I open the package, and I have to sit down on the edge of the tub because my legs don’t seem interested in holding me up anymore.
Three minutes. That’s what the pharmacist said. Three minutes to confirm or deny, to change everything or change nothing.
I watch the test strip like it’s a bomb that might go off, counting seconds in my head because looking at my phone would require acknowledging that Giovanni hasn’t called since yesterday morning.
The first minute crawls. The second drags.
By the third, I’ve bitten my thumbnail down to the quick and I’m fairly certain I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
Two lines.
I stare at them until they blur, until my eyes are too wet to see anything clearly. Two lines. Pregnant. There’s a person in there - a tiny, impossible, terrifying person who’s half me and half the man I can’t reach, and they have no idea what kind of mess they’re being born into.
The laugh that escapes me sounds more like a sob. “Of course,” I whisper to the empty bathroom. “Of course this is how it happens.”
* * *
I call Delphine because I need to hear a voice that isn’t my own, bouncing off these walls like a ghost’s.
She picks up on the third ring, and just the sound of her “All??” makes something loosen in my chest - the particular relief of a friend who’s known you long enough to hear the cracks you’re trying to hide.
“It’s me,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I feel, the words careful and controlled in a way that probably tells her everything.
“Cielo.” Her tone sharpens immediately. “What’s happened? Are you hurt?”
“No. I’m not - I’m fine. I just needed to talk.”
“You don’t sound fine. You sound like you’ve been crying.”
“Maybe a little.” I sink down onto the bathroom floor, my back against the cool tile wall. “I found out something today. Something big. And I don’t know what to do with it.”
“Big good or big bad?”
“I don’t know yet. Both, maybe.” I press my free hand against my stomach, against the secret I’m still getting used to carrying.
“I need to tell Giovanni, but he’s not here.
Again. And I keep thinking - what if I tell him and nothing changes?
What if I hand him this enormous thing and he still chooses the meetings, the deals, the-”
“Slow down.” Delphine’s voice cuts through my spiral. “You’re getting ahead of yourself. What did you find out?”
“I can’t tell you. Not yet. Not until I’ve told him first.”
“That’s annoyingly principled of you.”
“I know.”
She’s quiet for a moment, and I can hear her thinking. That’s one of the things I love about Delphine - she doesn’t fill silences with empty comfort. She waits until she has something worth saying.
“Here’s what I know,” she says finally. “You have options, Cielo. Whatever this thing is, whatever he does when you tell him - you have options. You’re not trapped.”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
“It never does when you’re in the middle of it. But I’m here. I’m always here. And if you need to leave - if it comes to that - I have a car waiting for you in the village. Keys with the bartender at the café near the market square. Just in case.”
“Delphine, that’s-”
“Paranoid? Probably. But humor me. I’ve had it there for a week, ever since you called me crying at two in the morning.” Her voice softens. “I hope you never need it. But if you do, it’s there.”
My eyes are burning again. “What did I do to deserve you?”
“Something terrible in a past life, probably. Now - this thing you need to tell Giovanni. When are you going to do it?”
“Tonight. I’m going to make dinner. Set the table properly. And when he comes home, I’m going to tell him everything.”
“And if he doesn’t come home?”
“He will.” I say it with more certainty than I feel. “He has to. This is too important.”
“Cielo.” Her voice is gentle now, but firm. “Listen to me. You can’t control what he does. You can only control what you do. Tell him because you deserve to be heard, not because you think it will fix him.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I’m learning.”
She laughs, low and warm. “That’s the best any of us can do.” A pause. “Call me tomorrow. Whatever happens. Promise me.”
“I promise.”
We say goodbye, and I sit there on the bathroom floor for a long moment after, the phone heavy in my hand and the test sitting on the counter above me, those two lines holding my entire future hostage.
* * *
The afternoon stretches out in front of me, long and empty, and I spend it preparing.
Not physically - there’s nothing to prepare, really, no bags to pack or arrangements to make. This is different. This is me sitting on the terrace with my hand on my stomach, having a conversation with someone who can’t hear me yet.
“I’m going to tell your father about you tonight,” I say to the sea, to the air, to the tiny cluster of cells that will someday be a person.
“He’s going to be surprised. Maybe scared - he doesn’t do well with surprises.
But he’ll love you. I know that much. Whatever else is wrong between us, he’ll love you. ”
The words feel thin in the open air, but saying them makes them more real. Makes this more real.
A child changes everything. That’s what I’m going to tell him. A child means we can’t keep doing this - the distance, the neglect, the endless parade of meetings and missions that swallow him whole and leave me with the scraps. A child means he has to choose.
And if he doesn’t choose us?
I push the thought away before it can take root.
He will. He has to. Giovanni Salvatore has spent his entire life building walls to protect the things he loves, and now there’s something new to protect.
Something small and helpless and completely dependent on the choices we make in the next few months.
He’ll choose us. I have to believe that.
* * *
The afternoon light is starting to turn golden, and I make my decision.
Tonight. I’m going to tell him tonight.
I’ll set the table - the good linens, the candles, something that shows him this matters.
I’ll wear the blue dress he loves, and I’ll wait for him to come home, and when he walks through that door, I’m going to tell him everything.
Not just about the baby. About all of it.
The loneliness, the fear, the slow erosion of everything I thought we were building together.
He’ll have to choose. I’ll make him choose.
And if he chooses wrong - if he looks at me with that distracted expression and reaches for his phone and tells me he’s sorry but something came up - then at least I’ll know. At least I’ll have my answer.
I press my hand against my stomach, against the tiny life that has no idea what kind of chaos it’s being born into, and I make a silent promise.
I’m going to tell your father about you tonight. And whatever happens after - whatever he chooses - I’ll protect you. That’s the one thing I can guarantee.
The necklace is warm against my collarbone. The house is quiet around me. Somewhere out there, Giovanni is finishing whatever meeting has swallowed his day, and soon - soon - he’ll come home.
And everything will change.