29
GAbrIELA DUARTE
That Tuesday, Beatrice apologized.
Paola had arranged for her to deliver the exhibition documents at ten. She arrived alone and stopped at the studio door. I asked her in but kept the door open when she tried to close it. The folder lay between us on the table.
“I haven’t come to argue,” she said before I could speak. “I’ve come to acknowledge that I crossed lines.”
I stayed standing.
“Which ones?”
“Luca’s bedroom, the ball, the board meeting. I can list them all if that helps.”
“It would help to understand why.”
She glanced toward the windows.
“I spent half my life believing Luca and I would get back together. Not out of romance. Out of habit, family, and because everyone around us treated it as inevitable. When you arrived, I realized nothing had ever been inevitable.”
I looked for signs of a performance: trembling hands, exaggerated emotion, phrases too perfect to be sincere. I found only restraint. She looked like a woman tired of a war she’d started herself.
“That doesn’t excuse what you did,” I said.
“No. But it explains it. I’m tired of behaving like a woman I don’t recognize.”
She pushed the folder toward me.
“The reproduction licenses for the photographs from the foreign archives. They sat with me during the cost review. The last replies came yesterday.”
I opened the folder and checked it against Paola’s list. The permissions covered the images chosen for the exhibition. I’d still need to file the copies with the team; there was no reason to thank Beatrice for finally delivering them.
“Why bring them yourself?”
“Because I wanted to ask for a fresh start professionally.”
“I don’t need friendship.”
“Neither do I. Just civility.”
She held out her hand. I hesitated before shaking it.
“Civility.”
When she left, Lorenzo was waiting by the meeting room. She passed him without stopping. The lack of conversation told me little. I forwarded the documents to Paola and went back to work.
That afternoon, Lorenzo came to see me about a benefit dinner scheduled for the final phase of construction, in support of the Bellandi hospital’s pediatric wing.
He asked whether Cris would attend. My friend had already mentioned he’d be in Milan that week for a conference; he worked with a Brazilian foundation seeking partners in children’s healthcare.
“Why Cris?”
“Because he’s a pediatrician, speaks Italian, and knows the Brazilian program. Besides, the initiative will support Bianca and other children assisted by the fund.”
The mention of Enrico’s daughter softened my resistance, exactly as Lorenzo had probably intended.
“Does Luca know?”
“He approved the event.”
I asked the organizers to send Cris a formal invitation and checked with Luca before confirming my own attendance.
He approved my friend’s presence without enthusiasm.
I would present the Palazzo panels at an exhibition of the group’s projects, coordinated by Paola.
Cris accepted after speaking to the foundation and reviewing the program.
“Will I have to share a table with the billionaire?” he asked over the phone.
“Maybe. You survived a whole coffee together.”
“The coffee helped.”
“I’ll make sure there’s some.”
He laughed and asked me to send the schedule.
Over the next two months, the restoration moved into the finishing work.
The Venetian silk, received weeks earlier, was finally installed after every piece had been checked.
Two proposals I’d prepared with Cris brought in smaller jobs in Lisbon, carried out by the team still there.
The sale had cleared the loans secured against the office, and I’d negotiated installments for the personal balance.
I was still counting payments, but I no longer expected the bank to call every morning.
At the Palazzo, furniture filled the restored rooms, doors were tested, and the list of outstanding work finally began to shrink.
Luca divided his weeks between London, Milan, and Como.
Sometimes he arrived after midnight, and we managed only breakfast together before he left again.
Other nights, he left his phone in the office, and we ate in the garden.
The staff no longer pretended surprise at finding us together; the press kept asking questions he refused to answer.
One Friday, I found him in the pavilion with two covered plates. I’d promised to finish early and arrived almost an hour late, a plaster sample in my coat pocket.
“It’s cold,” he said, lifting one of the covers.
“I can ask them to warm it up.”
“I’ve sent everyone home.”
I set my bag on a chair. There were two missed calls from him on the phone I’d left on silent.
“I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”
He nodded but stayed standing. I took the sample from my pocket and set it on the table.
“Want to know what kept me?”
He looked at the piece of plaster.
“That?”
“That kept four people busy today.”
He pulled out his chair and sat. I explained the difference in tone that showed only after drying. He held the sample to the light, turned it, and pointed to the wrong side. I started laughing.
“I was about to deliver an expert opinion,” he warned.
“Good thing I got here.”
We shared the cold food while I tried to help him see the difference. After I’d put the sample away, he was still rubbing his thumb over the dust it had left on the table.
“Are you working tomorrow?” I asked.
“In the morning. Not after two.”
“Then pick me up in the project room. If I’m explaining something, you can remind me of the time.”
“You’ll argue.”
“Probably. But I’ll come with you.”
On Saturday, he appeared at two with the sample in his hand and said he’d come to collect the expert. Carlo heard, looked at the clock, and handed me my bag before I could launch into another explanation.
I knew the limits of that happiness. Still, I was happy. Perhaps that was why I ignored the first wave of nausea.
The opening was a little over two weeks away. I blamed coffee, exhaustion, a missed lunch. The next day, an employee’s perfume drove me out of a meeting. Two days later, I woke with sore breasts. I opened the calendar on my phone: the bleeding I’d expected during my break from the pill hadn’t come.
Impossible.
I went back over the past few weeks: a night in Como between two of Luca’s trips, a Sunday when he’d returned from Milan before I woke.
He’d been with me during that time. There was nothing to prove, yet I was already assembling dates as though someone would demand a defense.
I put the phone aside. Beneath the fear was another feeling, small and insistent.
Joy.
I let myself feel it for a few seconds. I imagined Luca’s gray eyes in a child, a tiny hand wrapped around his finger, the astonishment of a man who’d built his life around the certainty that he would never be a father.
The image warmed my chest before the memory of Beatrice cut through it.
To Luca, an impossible pregnancy might not look like a miracle at first. It might look like a crime scene he’d seen before.
We’d used condoms the first few times. Later, we’d relied on his diagnosis and the pill I took to control cramps.
I’d missed pills in the rush of the past few weeks and hadn’t worried as much as I should have.
Luca’s certainty had become an easy excuse for me too.
I called the doctor’s office in Como; the first available appointment was after the dinner in Milan.
I booked it, though I knew I could buy a test before then.
I traveled to the event without taking one.
At the hotel, I discovered that two panels had arrived in the wrong sizes.
My phone had died on the way. An assistant lent me one of the organizers' phones; I called the supplier and sent the measurements from the temporary number.
I returned it once the replacements were arranged.
Back in the suite, I left my phone charging.
Cris knocked shortly before we were due downstairs.
He wore a tuxedo and carried a drawing Bianca had given him during a hospital visit that afternoon.
“You’re pale,” he said as soon as he saw me.
“I worked all night.”
“Feeling sick?”
“A little.”
His next question stopped my search for the second earring.
“Could you be pregnant?”
I closed the bedroom door.
“Keep your voice down.”
“Gabi?”
“Luca’s sterile.”
“You won’t work this out by trying to interpret fifteen-year-old results, Gabi. You need a pregnancy test.”
“The reports say azoospermia.”
“Have you taken a test?”
“Not yet.”
He took me by the shoulders.
“Take one today.”
“I have the event.”
“I can get you a test. You don’t have to keep guessing.”
“I don’t want to find out in a hotel bathroom.”
“Where would you rather be?”
“At home. With time. Not ten minutes away from smiling at two hundred people.”
He hugged me.
“All right. We’ll get through dinner. Then you decide.”
I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against his chest by the window. I even recognized the soap he’d used since college. For a few seconds, I let him hold me.
“If it’s positive, I want to tell Luca in person,” I murmured.
“Okay. Confirm it first, then talk to him.”
“No one knows.”
I stepped out of his arms and finished putting on my earrings.
He went out to make a call, and we agreed to meet in the ballroom.
At dinner, my place was beside his. Lorenzo sat across from us.
Luca was in London and would join only by video.
Beatrice moved among the guests with flawless efficiency.
“You make a lovely couple,” a donor remarked over dessert.
“We’re friends,” I corrected.
“Old friends,” Cris added.
Lorenzo raised his glass toward us.
“Old friendships are rare.”
The comment seemed innocent, but his gaze lingered on Cris a moment too long. After dinner, a storm disrupted transportation. Lorenzo offered suites at the Bellandi hotel to guests who couldn’t get home. Cris had booked a hotel in another neighborhood, but traffic was blocked.
“There’s a room available on Gabriela’s floor,” Lorenzo said. “It’ll make leaving tomorrow easier.”
“How long until the roads clear?” Cris asked.
I looked at the rain beating against the glass doors. I didn’t want him trying to cross the city now either.
“If it’s going to be a while, you can wait with me,” I offered.
Before Lorenzo answered, Beatrice appeared with the key cards.
“His suite is still being prepared,” she said. “Reception will let him know when it’s ready.”
I took my card; Cris received the other.
We went up together. It was 11:17 p.m. when I opened my suite. The hall was almost empty. In the sitting room, I set my bag on a chair and took off my shoes.
Cris opened the minibar and handed me a bottle of water. Then he took a small box from his inside jacket pocket and set it beside my bag.
“I got it at the pharmacy next door before dinner. Keep it.”
I looked at the pregnancy-test box.
“I don’t know if I can do it now.”
“You’re shaking.”
“Because if it’s positive, everything changes.”
“Does Luca love you?”
I looked at the window.
“He’s never said.”
“And you?”
“Yes.”
The word came easily. I looked at Cris, who was waiting for me to go on.
“When you know the result, he needs to hear it from you,” he said.
“What if he thinks I cheated? The tests say it can’t be his.”
“Have new tests done. You have the means to find out.”
“He wanted to wait until after the opening to see another doctor.”
Cris frowned.
“Even with the contacts I sent?”
I nodded. He pressed the water bottle against my knee until I took it.
“I’ve asked more than once. He keeps saying he’ll decide afterward.”
“If it’s positive, he’ll have new information. He may agree to see another doctor.”
“And if he can’t?”
“We don’t even know the test result yet. Have a drink.”
I took two sips. My hands were steadier.
“I’ll go with you tomorrow if you want,” he said.
“I do.”
I turned the cap between my fingers.
“Beatrice betrayed him with a pregnancy, Cris. He told me.”
He nodded slowly.
“You’re not her. Luca knows that.”
I remembered the promise in the garden: he would ask before believing the worst.
“He’ll ask.”
“I hope so.”
Cris kissed my forehead. Just then, someone knocked to say his suite was ready.
He loosened his tie and picked up the card Beatrice had given him.
The bedside clock read 11:43 p.m.; he’d been with me less than half an hour.
I went to the door as he walked down the hall.
I watched him try the card twice without success.
The employee waiting for him used his own key and promised to arrange a replacement in the morning.
Before going back inside, I saw Beatrice near the elevators, checking her phone. She looked up and smiled. I gave her a brief wave and closed the door.
Back in the sitting room, I picked up my phone from the charger and found a message from Cris confirming he was in his room. I replied, asking him to come to the lab with me in the morning if necessary. Then I took the box from beside my bag. I couldn’t sleep with the answer within reach.
In the bathroom, I read the instructions before opening the package. I took the test, set it on the sink, and set my phone’s timer for the specified wait. While I waited, I wrote Luca a message. I need to tell you something when you get back.
I deleted it before sending. I didn’t even know the result yet. I returned to the instructions, checking how many minutes I had to wait, and didn’t look at the sink again until the alarm sounded.