Chapter 6 The Night the House Went Quiet #2
"What are you going to do?" Gia asks finally.
The question feels enormous. What am I going to do?
An hour ago I would have said I was going to wait for Leon to find a flight, share what was left of the dinner I made, try to salvage something from this anniversary even if it meant lighting the candles at midnight.
An hour ago I still believed that his getting home would be enough, that his presence could outweigh everything else.
"I don't know," I tell her. "I honestly don't know. I can't think straight right now."
"That's fair. You don't have to decide anything tonight." She pauses. "Do you want me to come over? I can be there soon."
"No. Thank you, but no. I just need to be quiet for a while. I need to figure out what I'm feeling."
"All right. But you call me if you change your mind. Any hour, Ysabel. I mean it. You shouldn't be alone in that big house with all of this sitting on you."
"I know. Thank you, Gia. Really."
"Take care of yourself. Whatever happens next, take care of yourself first."
I hang up and set the phone on the cushion beside me.
The screen stays dark, no new messages, no update from Leon about whether he's found a flight or given up for the night or decided to stay in a hotel and try again tomorrow.
I don't know where he is right now, this husband I love who can't seem to reach me, and I don't know if not knowing makes it better or worse.
The house settles around me, quiet and watchful.
I can hear the clock ticking in the hallway, the small sounds of an old building breathing in the evening cool.
Somewhere in the depths of the house there are staff still working, but not here, not in this part of the building where I sit alone with my unlit candles and my empty table.
I push myself up from the settee, legs stiff from sitting curled so tight.
The television screen is dark, reflecting back a distorted version of the room, and I turn away from it before I can catch my own face in the glass.
I walk to the dining room.
The table is exactly as I left it.
The cream napkins with their embroidered leaves, folded precisely at each place. The good plates from the cabinet Vera guards so carefully. Wine glasses catching what's left of the evening light through the windows. Candles in their silver holders, still unlit, still waiting.
On the sideboard, the food sits under its cloth covering.
The focaccia I made this morning, still good though it's been hours since it came out of the oven.
The vegetables I roasted this afternoon, rich with the good vinegar, cooled now but not ruined.
The olive oil cake with its orange glaze, the missing wedge from the slice I ate earlier leaving a gap in its perfect roundness.
I ate standing at the counter, I remember.
Tore off a piece of focaccia and let the rosemary dissolve on my tongue. Picked at the vegetables because not eating makes everything worse. Cut myself a slice of cake and ate it slowly, tasting oranges and sunshine and wondering when Leon's flight would finally arrive.
That was before. Before the television. Before Nadia's hand on his arm.
Before I watched my husband stand beside another woman and let the world draw its own conclusions.
I look at the table with its two place settings, two chairs, two napkins with their careful embroidery. I spent so much time on this.
Choosing the napkins in the shop in town, polishing the glasses until they caught the light, arranging everything just so because I wanted tonight to be beautiful.
I wanted Leon to walk through the door and see what I'd made for us and know that even when everything else was difficult, this much was real.
He's not here to see it. He might not be here for hours, might not be here until tomorrow, might not be here at all if the airports keep conspiring against him.
And even if he does walk through that door, even if he finds a miracle flight and lands and drives up the long gravel road to find me still waiting, he'll still be the man I watched on television tonight.
The man who stood beside Nadia and let strangers assume she belonged there.
I love him. That's the terrible part. I love him and I know he loves me, and none of it seems to be enough.
I reach out and touch one of the napkins, running my finger along the embroidered leaf border.
Two years ago I married a man who defied his mother to be with me. Two years ago I believed that kind of love could carry us through anything, that choosing each other once meant we would keep choosing each other forever.
But choosing happens more than once.
Choosing happens every day, in small moments and large ones, in the words we say and the silences we leave unfilled.
And for two years I've been waiting for Leon to choose me in the ways that matter, in the public spaces where everyone can see, and for two years he's been choosing something else instead.
Smoothness. Diplomacy. Peace with his mother. The path of least resistance.
I pull my hand back from the napkin and turn away from the table.
In the pantry, the almond crescents wait in their unbaked rows, pale and perfect on the baking sheet. I was saving them for when Leon arrived, so they'd be warm and fragrant, so the smell would fill the kitchen the way it did when my grandmother made them for saints' days and feast days.
Now they'll keep until tomorrow, or the day after, or never if I can't bring myself to bake them.
I walk back through the quiet house, past the small parlor with its dark television, past the sitting room where I've spent so many hours trying to read books I can't concentrate on.
My phone is still on the settee where I left it after talking to Gia. I pick it up and carry it with me, not ready to look at it but not willing to leave it behind either.
The stairs seem longer than usual as I climb them. I keep one hand on the banister and climb without looking back.
Our bedroom is at the end of the hall, the door closed the way I left it this morning when I went downstairs to start cooking. I push it open and stand in the doorway for a moment, looking at the room that's been mine and Leon's for two years.
The bed is made, covers smooth, pillows arranged.
My nightstand with its crackers and water glass, the morning's defenses against nausea. Leon's side empty and undisturbed, the book he was reading before he left still sitting where he put it down.
I cross to the window and look out at the fading light.
The groves are soft shadows in the distance, the familiar landscape of the estate stretching toward the hills. I've watched this view so many times, in so many moods. Happy and hopeful and lonely and lost.
Tonight it just looks like what it is: land that belongs to the Roscianos, that has belonged to them for generations, that will go on belonging to them long after whatever happens next.
My phone buzzes in my hand. I look down and see Leon's name, a text message.
Still working on it. Nothing confirmed yet but I haven't given up. I'll let you know as soon as I have news. I love you.
I read it twice, then three times. Still working on it.