7. Lorenzo #3
I forward the update to Chiara’s phone with a single line: No sender identified yet. The driver remains available whenever you need.
This time she won’t have to ask whether there’s news. I keep the phone beside my notes while I wait for her answer. When none comes, I almost send a second message asking whether she has eaten, then put the phone down. She isn’t obliged to report to me.
I check the clock.
Evening is settling over the house. I could find Chiara and go through what I know about the investigation, though that would mean explaining the decision I made this morning. I stay in my study, shuffling papers I’ve already read.
The knock comes after dark, soft and hesitant.
When I call out permission to enter, Livia appears in the doorway. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her face pale, her usual composure absent. The door swings wider behind her, and she doesn’t bother to close it fully as she steps inside.
“Lorenzo.” She stops just inside the door instead of coming straight to the desk as she usually does. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I needed to talk to someone.”
I set down my pen and gesture to the chair across from my desk. She sinks into it like her legs won’t hold her, her hands twisting in her lap.
“The sommelier pulled me aside after the cellar closed tonight.” She looks up at me, searching my face as though I might already have an answer prepared.
“He said the analysis came back. Foreign substance, deliberately introduced. He said the investigators are looking at everyone with cellar access during the service batch handling.”
I keep my expression neutral. The finding will have reached the people whose work is being examined. I had hoped to speak to them myself before they began interpreting it for one another. “The investigators spoke with you yesterday. You knew questions were coming.”
“Questions are different from this.” She shakes her head, a sharp little movement. “Yesterday felt like procedure. Today the sommelier looked at me like I was already guilty. Like the access records point straight at me and everyone knows it.”
She’s not wrong about the access records. Her name is on the original list in my jacket pocket, beside the note about her supervisory access. Nothing I said this morning has altered that fact.
“Can I get you water?” I stand and move toward the sideboard, falling back on hospitality because I don’t know what else to offer. “You look like you could use something.”
“I don’t need water.” But she takes the glass when I bring it, wrapping both hands around it like it might keep her steady. “I need to know if I still have a job tomorrow. If you’re going to let them build a case against me because your wife decided I’m the villain in her story.”
I return to my seat, keeping the desk between us. The glass sits untouched in her hands, condensation already forming on the surface.
“There’s no decision about your position today.” I resist the urge to reach for the list in my pocket. “The investigation is still gathering information. Interviews aren’t verdicts.”
“Then why does it feel like one?” Tears spill down her cheeks, and I watch her try to blink them back, try to hold onto some dignity.
“I grew up in this valley, Lorenzo. I’ve worked on this estate for years.
You promoted me yourself two weeks ago because you trusted me to handle the cellar operations. ”
The reminder lands harder than she probably intended.
I did promote her. I signed the paperwork and told her she’d earned the responsibility and felt good about honoring what I thought my father would have wanted.
Now that promotion sits in the investigators’ notes like evidence of opportunity, and I’m the one who created it.
“The promotion isn’t in question.” I hear the defensiveness in my own voice and don’t know how to remove it. “Your work record isn’t in question.”
“Everything feels like it’s in question.
” She sets the water glass on the edge of my desk, her hands shaking visibly.
“The staff whisper when I walk past. The sommelier can barely look at me. And Signora Marchetti has been in the cellar asking about timing, about handling, about who was alone with the service bottles and when.”
I picture Chiara’s notebook open beside mine yesterday, the distinction she made between suspicion and proof. She had been careful. Livia makes it sound as though my wife walked into the cellar demanding a name she had already chosen.
“The findings haven’t identified who did it.” I choose my words carefully, aware that I’m walking a line I don’t fully understand. “Whatever the sommelier told you about access records, that’s not the same as an accusation.”
“It feels like the step before one.” She pushes the untouched glass away from her. “You’ve known me my whole life. You know I would never destroy something your father built. Something I helped build. This estate is everything I have.”
The investigators asked much the same question this morning, without the tears: what made me so certain I could exclude her? I offered them history. Sitting across from her now, I find myself reaching for it again.
“You’re scared.” I push the water a little farther from the edge before her sleeve can catch it. “I understand that. But being scared isn’t the same as being accused, and being questioned isn’t the same as being condemned.”
“I need more than that.” She leans forward in her chair, her eyes fixed on my face. “I need to know that you don’t believe what she’s saying about me. That twenty years of friendship means something when it matters.”
A lifetime, near enough. I knew her before either of us worked in these cellars, before my father helped her find a place here. The promotion was my decision, though. I signed it because I trusted her, and she knows that is what I am defending now.
The silence stretches between us. I should say something careful, something that acknowledges her fear without promising things I can’t deliver.
I should tell her that the investigation will run its course, that evidence matters more than suspicion, that I’m doing everything I can to find the truth.
She picks up the glass at last but doesn’t drink. I remember how readily she accepted work, how rarely she accepted help without promising to repay it. I don’t want her sitting in this chair wondering whether everything familiar has become unsafe.
“I know you didn’t do this.” The words come easily, and as they leave my mouth I see Chiara in the open doorway behind Livia, holding papers against her chest.
My wife looks straight at me. Her mouth parts, but no words come. Then she steps back, and the corridor is empty before I can get out of my chair.
She didn’t hear. I try to believe it while Livia lowers the glass and lets out a relieved breath. Chiara might only have arrived at the end of the sentence. She might not know what I meant.
But she was looking at me before I finished.
She heard the answer I wouldn’t give her.