9. Chiara #2
“I stood up there trying not to cry loudly enough for you to hear.” I move my hand off the notebook. “You gave her a handkerchief.”
“Chiara, please.”
“I won’t stand here and ask you to love me.” Saying it hurts enough that I have to stop before I can finish. “But I deserved your loyalty. Whatever you felt, I was still your wife.”
“You are my wife.”
“You remembered that when you needed to explain the arrangement. She got to hear that marrying me hadn’t changed anything for her. It seems clear who weighs more for you.”
He releases the chair, then grips it again.
“When she asked you to make me stop, you knew exactly what to say.” I put the notebook beside the receipt. “That you would handle me. Well, I guess that’s how it is as I’m just your transaction, right?”
“It’s not… I just wanted to fix everything. Chiara, I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”
“That’s the problem, Lorenzo. When she needs reassurance, you find the words. You told her you’d handle me. You told her you knew she didn’t do it. And then you stood in front of me and asked for time to review the evidence.”
“The evidence isn’t conclusive…” He draws the receipt toward him again. “I can’t destroy someone’s life over this. It has to be checked.”
“Check it, then.” I push the supplier’s details back toward him. “I’m asking you to do that. But you keep telling me what Livia would never do before you’ve asked her what she did.”
“I can’t ruin an innocent woman on circumstantial evidence.
” He lays the receipt over the supplier’s details and flattens both beneath his hand.
“If you had proof, actual proof, I would act on it. But you don’t.
You have suspicions and coincidences and testimony from someone who’s already on your side. ”
An innocent woman. He’s still calling her that. After everything I’ve shown him, after everything I’ve said, he’s still defending her.
“You’re worried about ruining an innocent woman.” I take my notebook from the edge of his desk. “I stood in a shop today while strangers accused me. I had to tell them about the findings myself. Where is that concern when it’s me?”
“I have stood up for you.” He moves around the desk, closing the distance between us. “I defended your ideas at the planning meetings. I backed your vision for the launch. I stood beside you in front of the buyers and told them this was our direction.”
“I remember.” I don’t step back when he comes close. “I left that meeting thinking we’d finally begun to find our way. I trusted you with something that mattered to me. That’s why it hurts so much to stand here now.”
“You matter.” He stops in front of me, close enough that I could reach for him without moving. “God, Chiara, you matter more than you know.”
“Then believe me.” I put my hand on his chest, feeling his heart pound beneath my palm. “Right now, in this moment, choose me. Tell me you believe what I’m telling you about Livia, and that you’re going to investigate her properly instead of protecting her.”
His hand lifts toward mine, then stops. I wait with my palm against his shirt, hating that I still want him to cover it with his own.
“I can’t.” He looks past me at the desk instead of taking my hand. “I can’t condemn her without more proof. I need time. Please.”
I take my hand off his chest and step back.
“I can’t keep waiting like this.” I gather my copies from his desk and tuck them into my folder with the notebook. “Keep investigating. Call the supplier. Talk to Rosalia. But I won’t spend another night trying to earn an answer you gave her without asking for a thing.”
“I don’t want this.” He reaches for me, but I’m already moving toward the door. “Chiara, please. Don’t do this.”
“I need you to let me go upstairs.” I stop with my hand on the doorknob. He is still near enough to follow, and I need him to hear this without turning it into another question about Livia. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”
He stays where he is. I wish his face didn’t look so familiar when I am trying to leave it.
I open the door and walk out.
***
My hands are shaking as I climb the stairs to our bedroom.
The room looks the same as it did this morning, before I went to the cellar, before I confronted Livia, before I laid out my evidence and watched my husband dismiss it.
The bed is still made. My clothes are still in the wardrobe.
My plant journals are still on the nightstand, full of the notes I’ve made while learning this land.
I pull my suitcase out of the wardrobe and carry it to the bed.
The suitcase catches against the bedframe. I lift it over the corner, lay it flat and open it. It’s the one I brought from Lyon, and I am absurdly relieved that I don’t have to search for a key.
What am I doing?
I stop with a stack of sweaters in my hands, staring at the suitcase like it might answer me.
I haven’t worked out where I’ll go. I just know that I can’t stay here, can’t keep sleeping down the hall from a man who won’t believe me, can’t keep walking through a house where the staff look through me like I’m invisible.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. For a moment I think it’s Lorenzo, unable to say it to my face but finding a way to tell me he’s changed his mind. But when I check the screen, it’s Rosalia.
Are you okay? I heard you went to his study.
I stare at the message, trying to figure out how to answer. I’m not okay. I’m packing a suitcase without knowing where I’m going. I’m leaving my husband without knowing if I’ll ever come back.
Come to my room, I type back. I need your help.
She arrives within minutes, still wearing her work apron, her face tight with worry. She stops in the doorway when she sees the suitcase open on the bed.
“Signora.” She looks from the suitcase to the clothes in my arms, then steps inside without waiting to be invited. “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.” I keep folding clothes, keeping my hands busy so I don’t have to look at her. “He wouldn’t listen. He said the evidence was circumstantial, said you were biased, said he needed time. He called Livia an innocent woman.”
Rosalia closes the door behind her, shutting out the sound of a trolley in the corridor. “Where will you go?”
“Somewhere near Palermo. A place I can pay for myself.” I lay another sweater in the suitcase. “Far enough away to think, close enough to come back for the records.”
“There’s a woman who rents cottages on a small citrus property outside the city. Lucia. My sister stayed there between flats.” Rosalia takes out her phone. “I can send you the number. You’ll have your own kitchen.”
“Send it. I’ll ask whether she has anything available.”
“Tonight?” Rosalia looks at the window, where the last of the daylight is fading into dusk. “It’s getting dark. The drive to Palermo…”
“I know.” I zip up the toiletry bag and set it in the suitcase. “I’ll text you when I arrive. I’m taking the car myself. I need the drive without someone waiting for instructions from Lorenzo. I’ll send you the route before I leave.”
Rosalia is quiet for a moment, watching me pack. Then she moves to the wardrobe and starts pulling out the practical clothes I haven’t touched yet, the things I’ll need if I’m going to be away for more than a night or two.
“Your journals.” She nods toward the stack on the nightstand. “The plant ones. Do you want me to pack those?”
I look at the journals, the careful notes I’ve been keeping since I arrived, the observations and experiments and small discoveries that have made this place feel almost like home. I should take them. They’re mine, the record of everything I’ve learned here.
The suitcase is already full, and those notes belong to work I can’t move tonight. I want to sort them when I can read a page without hearing Lorenzo ask me for time.
“Leave them.” I close the suitcase on my clothes and reach for my bag. “I’ll arrange to collect them. They’re safe here for now.”
Rosalia doesn’t argue. She helps me carry the suitcase to the door, then stops me with a hand on my arm.
“The evidence.” She glances toward my bag. “The copies you made. Do you have them?”
I check the bag, making sure I have my phone with the photos, my notebook with Rosalia’s testimony. The folder is here, too, with the copies I took back from Lorenzo’s desk. The original records remain with the supplier and the estate. Leaving doesn’t mean I’m giving up on clearing my name.
“I have what I need.” I squeeze her hand. “Thank you. For everything.”
“I should have told you sooner.” She touches the edge of the notebook before I close my bag. “About the phone call. About what I heard. Maybe if I’d said something earlier…”
“I wish you had.” I pull her into a hug before she can mistake that for blame for everything else. “But you didn’t make his choices, Rosalia. Neither of us did.”
When I pull back, she’s wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. “Text me when you get there. Promise.”
“I promise.” I hold her hand a moment longer before letting go. “Go on. I still need to write something for him.”
She leaves the suitcase beside my door and goes back downstairs. I stay in the room, listening to her footsteps until I can’t hear them anymore.
The letter takes longer to write than I expected.