17. Solenne #2
I watch her go. She doesn’t look back. At the terrace doors, her father intercepts her, takes her arm, guides her toward a side hallway. His face is carefully blank, but I can see the tension in his shoulders.
The other guests begin to move again, conversations resuming, the social machinery grinding back into motion.
A woman who was standing with Ginevra when we arrived steps aside to let her pass.
She doesn’t follow. Neither does the man who had been refilling her glass.
Through the doorway, I see Signor Solano speak to his daughter.
When she turns toward the reception hall, he shakes his head and opens the side-room door.
Valentin’s hand is still in mine. I squeeze it once, and he squeezes back.
“Thank you,” I say quietly.
“I should have done it months ago.”
“I didn’t have to explain what you heard.”
His thumb stills against my hand. “No. You didn’t.”
We stay on the terrace for a while longer, watching the sunset fade into purple and gray. People come and go, some stopping to talk, others keeping a careful distance. The wine is refilled. The evening continues.
At some point I realize I’m not cataloging threats anymore. I’m just standing here, beside my husband, watching the sky darken over the hills.
When a waiter comes past, I take one of the small pastries from his tray. I’ve been hungry for half an hour. Until now, I hadn’t noticed.
***
The party continues for another two hours.
We make the rounds, talk to the people who want to talk to us, politely acknowledge the ones who don’t. I find myself having an actual conversation with a woman beside the dessert table about her daughter’s pottery studio in Taormina.
Valentin discusses olive harvests with an elderly man who remembers his grandfather.
She shows me a photograph of a bowl her daughter made, blue glaze running unevenly down one side. She calls it an experiment but keeps enlarging it so I can see the detail. When I ask for the studio’s name, she writes it on the back of a place card.
For ten minutes, no one mentions my marriage. I keep the card.
By ten o’clock, I’m tired in a way that has nothing to do with the hour. Valentin notices.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes.”
We find Signor Solano near the entrance and thank him for the evening. He’s stiffly cordial, clearly relieved we’re leaving without further incident. I don’t take it personally. He asks Valentin to telephone him before we leave Sicily, then looks at me. “I hope the rest of your visit is pleasant.”
“So do I,” I tell him.
In the car, I lean my head against the seat and close my eyes. The driver pulls away from the estate, and I feel the tension begin to drain out of my shoulders.
“Where to?” Valentin asks.
I open my eyes. We booked separate rooms at a hotel in town, the arrangement we agreed on before I flew here. He hasn’t pushed for anything different. He’s been careful about that, careful about everything.
“The hotel,” I say, then stop.
The villa is twenty minutes from here. I haven’t been back since I left in April, since I packed two bags with shaking hands while Summer asked why we weren’t staying for the fireworks.
“Actually,” I say. “Can we go by the house first? Before the hotel?”
Valentin looks at me. “Are you sure?”
“I want to see it. Just for a few minutes.”
He nods and gives the driver the address. I watch his profile in the dim light, trying to read what he’s thinking. His expression gives nothing away.
The roads are quiet this time of night. We wind through the hills, past stone walls and olive groves, the headlights cutting through the darkness.
I recognize the turn where the stone wall drops low enough to see the sea.
There’s a chipped shrine at the next bend.
I remember looking for it from the car, counting the minutes until I could take off my shoes and get Summer ready for bed.
Small things to have missed. I didn’t know I had.
The villa appears around a curve, its windows dark except for a light in the kitchen. Delfina, probably, waiting up the way she always does.
The driver pulls into the circular drive and stops. Valentin gets out first, comes around to open my door. I step out onto the gravel and look up at the house.
It looks the same. Of course it looks the same. It’s been less than two months.
It feels like years.
“Take your time,” Valentin says.
I walk toward the front door. It’s unlocked, the way it always used to be when someone was home. I push it open and step into the foyer.
The smell hits me first. Old stone and lemon polish and something floral from the garden, the same scent that met me every time I came home. My throat tightens.
Footsteps from the kitchen doorway. I turn to find Delfina standing there, her face creased with emotion.
“Signora.” Her voice catches. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
“We’re only stopping by. I wanted to see the house.”
She crosses the foyer and pulls me into a hug. She smells like kitchen soap and something sweet, almond biscotti. I hug her back, and for a moment I’m not the woman who left, not the woman who came back. I’m just someone who needed to be held.
“I saw the footage,” I say when she pulls away. “Your statement. Thank you.”
“I should have said it sooner. When it happened.”
“You were afraid for your job. You still told him when I asked you to.”
She wipes her eyes with the corner of her apron. “Have you eaten? I can make something. It won’t take long.”
“We ate at the party. But thank you.”
She nods, looks between me and Valentin, and seems to decide something. “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.”
She retreats, her footsteps fading down the hallway. Valentin waits by the door while I put my bag on the narrow table.
Then I see the wall.
The wedding photograph is back. Not in the dim stairwell where Costanza moved it, not on the dresser in my bedroom where I rescued it.
Here, in the foyer, in the place of honor where it hung when I first moved in.
Valentin and me, four years ago, laughing at something the photographer said.
My dress was simple, his suit was impeccable, and we looked like two people who had no idea what was coming but didn’t care.
Beside it, where the portrait of young Valentin and Ginevra used to hang, there’s a different photograph.
I step closer.
It’s us. At the restaurant. The night he recreated our first date.
The candle is visible between us, and the peonies, and the edge of the chocolate torte. There’s a smear of chocolate on my plate. I’m looking at him instead of the camera, and he’s looking back at me, and something in both our expressions makes my breath catch.
I remember the waiter asking if we wanted a photo. I remember saying yes.
I didn’t know he’d printed it. I didn’t know he’d hung it here.
Footsteps behind me. Valentin stops a few feet away, giving me space.
“When did you do this?” I ask.
“Last week. Before I flew back to Los Angeles.”
“I didn’t know you printed it.”
“I wanted to ask if it was all right. Hanging it where people could see it.” He pauses. “If you’d rather I take it down…”
I turn toward him. “Why this one?”
“I wanted anyone who comes through that door to see exactly who this family is,” he says. “Our wedding. A night you agreed to spend with me. I wanted them here, but I don’t want to put more into that photograph than you meant.”
I turn to look at him. He’s standing in the shadows, the light from the kitchen catching the edges of his face. He looks tired. He looks hopeful. He looks like a man who has been waiting for something and doesn’t know if it’s coming.
“The Ginevra portrait,” I say. “Where did it go?”
“I sent it with my mother’s things when she moved to Milan. It isn’t coming back.”
“She won’t have liked that.”
“My mother has lost the right to opinions about what hangs in this house.”
I look back at the photographs. Our wedding day. Our first date recreation. Side by side in the entrance, the first things anyone sees when they walk in.
The door is still open behind him. The driver is waiting to take us back to the hotel, and my return flight is tomorrow. Nothing about standing here changes those arrangements.
I move closer to the dinner photograph. In the wedding picture, we face the camera. In this one, I have forgotten it is there.
“You can leave that one up,” I say.
He nods without coming toward me.
I touch the corner of the frame, straightening it a little. His eyes follow the movement, but he leaves the silence alone.
For once, I don’t have to explain what a small thing does or doesn’t promise.
The last time I was here, I took everything I thought I would need.
Tonight, I leave something of myself on the wall.