4. Solenne #2
The photographer adjusts his camera. The flash goes off once, twice. The group shifts, rearranges, poses for another shot. And another.
Ginevra says something that makes Valentin smile politely. Costanza watches with visible satisfaction.
No one calls for me to come down. No one seems to remember I exist.
The photographer lowers his camera and checks the screen. I step away from the railing, rubbing the cold from my fingers. Through the glass door I can see the server who checked for me earlier. I tell him I’ll be in the library and ask him to pass that on to Valentin.
***
He finds me in the library, a little over an hour after he said he’d be right back.
“There you are.” He sounds relieved, as if I’m the one who disappeared. “I’m so sorry, that took much longer than I expected. The photographs went on forever, and then the donors wanted to discuss the spring initiatives…”
“That wasn’t ten minutes, Valentin.”
He stops. In the dim light of the library, I can see the exhaustion on his face, the particular weariness of someone who’s been performing all evening.
“I know.” He stops listing the people who needed him. “I’m sorry. I should have come to find you.”
“Yes.” I don’t elaborate. I don’t tell him about the women and their gossip, about Costanza’s lie spreading through the room like poison. I don’t tell him about standing on the gallery watching him be arranged beside Ginevra like a prop in his mother’s carefully staged production.
I collect my coat from the chair. I have one overheard conversation and a photograph he will probably call a duty. I need to understand how long his mother has been telling that story before I hear him explain that she couldn’t have meant it.
“Let’s go home,” he says finally.
I don’t argue.
The car ride is quiet. Valentin checks his phone and finds my message from earlier.
“I didn’t even feel it vibrate,” he says, and he sounds genuinely confused. “I never checked my phone. I’m sorry, Solenne.”
“I know.” I watch the dark coastline pass outside the window. “I know you’re sorry.”
He doesn’t push. Maybe he senses that pushing would make it worse. Or maybe he’s just tired, the way I’m tired, the way we’re both always tired lately.
When we get home, he heads upstairs to change while I drift toward the kitchen, drawn by the light under the door.
***
Delfina is at the table, folding clean kitchen towels. Summer’s floury apron lies over the back of the other chair. She looks up when I enter, and something in her face shifts when she sees my expression.
“She hasn’t stirred,” Delfina says. “Didn’t wake once.”
“Thank you.” I pull out a chair and sit across from her. “For taking her tonight. For everything.”
“It’s no trouble. She’s good company.” Delfina smooths a crease from a towel. “The reception was difficult?”
I pick up a towel from the pile and fold it without really thinking about what I’m doing. “You could say that.”
“Tell me.”
So I do. Not everything, not the sharp edges of what I heard, but enough. The photograph I wasn’t invited to join. The hour I spent waiting for my husband to remember I existed. The feeling of being systematically erased while standing in plain sight.
Delfina listens without interrupting. When I finish, she sets down her towel and looks at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“The Donna sets these tables,” she says quietly. “She has always set them. Long before you arrived here.”
“I know.” I press my palms flat against the worn wood of the table. “I keep thinking if I just do the right thing, say the right thing, wait long enough… eventually it will get better. Eventually she’ll accept that I’m his wife and I’m not going anywhere.”
“And has it gotten better?”
The question lands somewhere painful. “No.”
Delfina nods slowly. “Don Emanuele was the same. Not unkind. Not deliberately cruel. But he never saw what was right in front of him. He trusted her to tell him if something was wrong. He seldom asked anyone else.”
“And Valentin?”
“He learned from his father.” She meets my eyes. “If his mother said everything was settled, he thought it was settled.”
I think about Valentin standing where his mother placed him, smiling politely at Ginevra’s joke, doing his duty the way he’s always done his duty. He’s not choosing her. I know that. But he’s not choosing me either.
“I keep trying to do this the right way,” I say. “I’ve asked to be included. I’ve told him I need him here. But I keep being told that I just need more time to settle in.”
“Perhaps.” Delfina picks up the remaining towel, her hands moving with the absent efficiency of decades of practice. “You shouldn’t have to ask to be included in your own family.”
We fold in silence for a moment. The kitchen is warm, the familiar smells of bread and herbs lingering in the air. This is the only room in the house where I feel like I can breathe.
“Delfina.” I set down my folded towel. “Was there someone in this house before me who didn’t fit her plans? Someone else the Donna didn’t approve of?”
Delfina’s hands go still.
“I’m not asking for details,” I add quickly. “I just need to know if this is… if I’m not the first person she’s tried to push out.”
The silence stretches between us. I can hear the clock on the wall, the distant sound of the sea through the shuttered windows.
“There have been others,” Delfina says finally. “People who didn’t fit the Donna’s vision of how things should be.”
“What happened to them? Did anyone ever… did anyone cross her and stay?”
Delfina’s face has gone very still, her hands frozen over the half-folded fabric in her lap. When she speaks, her voice is careful, measured.
“It’s not my story to tell.”
The towel slips from her lap. Neither of us reaches down to pick it up.