16. Chiara #2
“That should have been me.” She jabs a finger at her own chest. “I grew up in this valley with nothing. My family had nothing. And Cesare, he saw something in me that no one else did. He brought me onto the estate, gave me work, treated me almost like family. I thought, I thought if I worked hard enough, if I proved myself, eventually I would belong here. Really belong.”
“And you thought belonging meant marrying Lorenzo.” I keep her talking while I loosen my grip on the post, ready to move. “You thought if you just waited long enough, did your job well enough, he would see you. The way his father saw you.”
“I thought I’d earned it.” She wipes her cheeks with the heel of her hand, angry even at the tears.
“Every year I stayed, every problem I solved, every time I covered for someone else’s mistake so the family wouldn’t be embarrassed.
I earned my place here. And then you walked in with your family promise and your expensive education and took everything in a single afternoon. ”
“The promotion was not a marriage proposal.” I shift sideways, and she moves with me before I can pass. “Being good at your job doesn’t mean Lorenzo owes you his heart. It doesn’t mean you get to decide who he loves.”
“And you decided to destroy me.” I glance toward the shore, looking for an opening.
“I gave Lorenzo a reason to question you.” Her gaze moves over my shoulder to the water.
“The wine failure should have been enough. A public humiliation, a stain on the Marchetti name that everyone could blame on the foreign wife. But you wouldn’t leave.
You kept digging, kept asking questions, kept trying to prove you belonged here. ”
“I kept trying to prove I was innocent.” I feel the anger rising now, hot enough to push back the fear. “Because I was innocent. Because you framed me for something I didn’t do and then watched while the entire valley turned against me.”
“I enjoyed that part.” She waits for me to look back at her, making sure I hear the next words. “The way you walked through town while they whispered. You tried so hard to maintain your dignity, even when they refused to serve you. I wondered how long you could keep it up.”
I remember the women in the shop. The spitting. The cold shoulders and the turned backs. I remember Rosalia warning me that Livia had worked every house in the valley.
“Rosalia told me you were spreading it.” I stop searching her face for some trace of shame. “The gossip, the hostility. You were fanning the flames the whole time.”
“I didn’t have to do much.” She brushes at a tear on her cheek, as though the people who hurt me deserve less of her attention than that.
“People love to believe the worst about outsiders. All I had to do was seem sympathetic while mentioning how suspicious it was that you were the only one near the wine. The rest happened on its own.”
I need to get off this dock. I need to get past her and back to solid ground, where I have options, where I’m not trapped between a woman who’s spent years hating me and water cold enough to kill.
“Let me leave.” I release the post and hold my hands where she can see them, trying to give her a reason to step aside. “You’ve told me what you did. I know the truth now. You can still put an end to this before someone gets hurt.”
“You think I’m stupid?” She plants herself in front of me again. I could scream into her face from here, and nobody on the track would see her holding me back. “You’ll go straight to Lorenzo. Straight to your lawyer. You’ll tell them everything I just said.”
“They already have enough to keep investigating.” I spread my hands. “Hurting me won’t change that.”
“Then he can ask me about it himself.” She takes another step toward me, and I feel the end of the dock beneath my heels. “Once you stop telling him what to think of me.”
“You think my death will protect you?” My hand finds the post again, this time to stop her crowding me off the end. “You think Lorenzo won’t know exactly what happened? He’ll find out I came here to meet him. He’ll find out he never sent that note. He’ll figure out who forged it.”
“A tragic accident.” She looks down at the wet patches on the planks, then back at my boots.
“Lorenzo’s wife came to the lake alone at sunset.
Maybe she was confused. Maybe she was upset.
Maybe she decided to take the boat out and something went wrong.
These things happen, especially in winter.
Especially to women who never learned how to handle themselves around water. ”
“Help!” I shout toward the path, putting everything I have behind the word. Nothing moves among the trees. I shout again, and Livia reaches toward the boat.
“You won’t be here to tell him.” Her hand closes on one of the oars. “You won’t be here to testify. And once you’re gone, once the grief has passed, he’ll finally be able to see what’s been in front of him all along.”
She lifts the oar, holding it across her body like a barrier. Behind her, the path to shore is empty. No guards, no groundskeeper, no one who might have heard us talking. Just the fading light and the cold water and a woman who has convinced herself she deserves my life.
“Put the oar down.” I turn slightly, giving her less of my body to aim at. “This isn’t going to end the way you think.”
“It’s going to end exactly the way I planned.” She raises the oar higher, and I see her weight shift, preparing to swing.
When she glances toward the path, I lunge for the gap between her and the dock’s edge.