4. Chiara #4
“I want you to believe me when I tell you something is wrong.” My voice cracks despite my best efforts. “I want you to take my concerns as seriously as you take hers. I want to feel like your wife, not just another problem you have to balance against your oldest friend.”
“I do take your concerns seriously.” He stands too, moving toward the window as if he can’t bear the intensity of my gaze. “But I can’t accuse Livia of turning the staff against you based on… what? A rehearsal where she asked questions? Your account of what my mother said?”
“I’m asking you to speak to her.” I follow him, stopping a few feet away. “Ask why she’s still questioning a decision you made. Tell her I shouldn’t have to defend my place every time I stand up to give an instruction. Choose me when it’s hard, too.”
The words hang between us, heavy with everything I’m not saying. Choose me the way you did on the boat. Choose me the way you did in the tasting room. Choose me now, when there’s no audience, when it’s just us and the truth of what our marriage has become.
“I’ll talk to the staff.” He has answered the part that can be dealt with by an announcement. I wait for Livia’s name, but it doesn’t come. “Make sure everyone understands the chain of command. The plan proceeds as you designed it.”
“That’s what you offered before.” I remember standing in this same room with a list of requirements, grateful even for the promise of clearer instructions. “I’m asking you to speak to her, Lorenzo. Not everyone around her.”
“It’s what I can offer.” He finally turns to face me, and I see the exhaustion in his eyes, the weight of expectations he can’t escape. “I’m not going to interrogate Livia based on feelings and suspicions. But I will make sure your authority is clear.”
It’s not enough. It’s so far from enough that I want to scream. But I can also see that pushing harder will only make him dig in, convince himself that I’m being unreasonable.
“I have work to finish.” I reach the door before I remember that I came here hoping to feel less alone with it. Turning back would mean starting the same argument again. “Good night, Lorenzo.”
He doesn’t answer before I close the door.
I walk until I can trust myself to speak without crying.
The corridor is quiet. I pass the dining room and the small sitting room where Ortensia took tea with me this morning, then stop by the window at the far end.
Beyond the glass, the courtyard table stands empty.
Tomorrow I’ll put the jars out again and explain the same straightforward plan to anyone who needs to hear it. That part I can do.
The boat ride was real. So was his support in the tasting room. I don’t want to dismiss those things just because tonight hurt.
But how am I supposed to build on them if asking for his help means proving that his oldest friend isn’t who he thinks she is?
I press my palms against the cool sill until the urge to go back and argue passes. Then I remember the guest-list corrections, and the notebook I left on his desk.
Wonderful. Now I have to return while my face is still hot and explain that my dignified exit didn’t include my belongings.
His study door opens farther down the corridor.
Lorenzo steps out carrying a file, turns toward the stairs, and disappears before I move away from the window. I wait until his footsteps have faded, then go back for the notebook.
The lamp is still on. My notebook lies where I put it, beside the papers he was reading when I arrived. A folder has fallen open across one corner of the cover. I recognize Cesare’s name on a page of old wine records and move the folder carefully before pulling my notebook free.
A folded sheet slips from beneath it to the floor.
I bend to retrieve it, meaning to put it back with the records. The paper is soft at the creases, worn almost through where the folds meet. There is handwriting on the outer panel, a man’s name: Lorenzo.
I ought to replace it. I know that. Whatever is inside belongs to him, and being angry with him doesn’t make it mine.
I unfold it anyway.
“ Lorenzo,
I write this knowing I will not be here to say it in person, and perhaps that is fitting. I have never been good at speaking the words that matter.
When you marry, choose your wife. Every time, especially when it is hard. Especially when others demand your loyalty. The estate can survive anything except a divided house.
I did not do this well. Your mother could tell you of the times I chose pride or work or silence over her patience. I regret them. Learn from what I failed to do.
Your father,
Cesare ”
I look from the signature to the line about his wife. Cesare wrote this before our marriage, before he died. The man Lorenzo still tries so hard to please had asked him to do better than he had.
I hold the page by its edges, careful of the worn folds. This hasn’t been sealed away and forgotten. It has been opened, handled, kept among the papers Lorenzo still uses. I can’t know when he last read it, but the warning has been here, in his father’s own hand.
I refold the letter along its softened creases and return it to the folder.
Then I take my notebook from his desk.
He knew what I was asking for.