17. Luca
Luca
Giada’s phone rests on the bedside table beside the black credit card. Her suitcase is gone.
The bed remains made. The clothes I bought for her remain in the closet and drawers. The blue tardigrade shirt is gone. I pull open the desk drawer, and the notebook with my financial records lies inside it.
I take the phone and press the side button. The screen wakes beneath my thumb and shows no message, note, or destination in the maps application. The location record ends in this room.
“Where is she?”
The guard in the hall stands rigid. “She took a taxi from the main road. Three men followed, but they lost it near Madison.”
“Get me the driver. Pull the traffic cameras.”
I stop.
Giada left the phone here after remembering what I told her about its location system. She left the card; every purchase would create a record. Both systems could lead me to her, so she removed them. She planned this while I beat her father for hurting her.
The phone strikes the bedside table. I loosen my fingers before the glass breaks.
“Where did she tell the driver to take her?”
“He says she didn’t give an address. She paid cash and told him to keep driving until she chose.”
“Which direction?” I ask.
“East.”
That answer gives me half of Chicago and no wife. I put her phone in my pocket. “Get the route. Send men to the stations, hotels, hospitals, and her family’s properties.”
I look at the empty place beside the bed. Four steps carried me from the door to her phone. I had counted them in the hall while I gave her the privacy she requested. Four steps, and I arrived after she was gone.
My wife has little cash, no phone, and no winter clothes beyond the coat she wore out the door. Giuseppe remains free. Any man loyal to her father would deliver her to Giuseppe for money or favor. I call Mattia as I take the stairs.
“Any contact from Giuseppe’s people?”
“Nothing,” Mattia says.
“Assume they have her until we prove otherwise.”
I pass the stuffed tardigrade beside my keyboard. Giada’s gray coat is gone from the kitchen row. I take my coat and walk into the snow.
I enter the waiting car. “East on Madison.”
Snow strikes the windshield as the cab company and traffic cameras give us a broken trail: Giada circles through the city, leaves the taxi at a drugstore, slips out the second door, and boards a bus that crosses Chicago. Men deploy to stations, hotels, shelters, churches, museums, and libraries.
None of those places belongs to Giada. I close the map.
“Stop sending teams,” I say.
Mattia goes silent. “What?”
“Stop searching the stations and hotels. She isn’t leaving Chicago.”
“How certain are you?” he asks.
“She didn’t take the notebook.”
“I don’t follow,” he says.
“It contains work she intends to finish. She left the card and stuffed tardigrade, but kept the blue shirt. She packed for separation, not disappearance.”
The answer stops every other calculation. Separation. She plans to release me from a marriage she believes I never wanted. Her father repeated that lie until she accepted it, and my silence gave it room.
The silver pin presses against my coat when I lean toward the driver. Eight blunt legs surround an inaccurate mouth. Giada bought it after I told her the card had no spending limit. She used less than one hundred dollars. When Giada could buy anything, she included me.
Giada told me most tardigrades need a thin film of water around them to move and feed. Moss holds moisture between its leaves. A Chicago winter offers frozen ground and dormant plants, but the city contains one vast building kept warm and wet through January.
Chicago in January offers cold, wind, traffic, and strangers. Giada would choose none of those. She would choose warmth, quiet, plants, moss, and water.
“Garfield Park Conservatory,” I tell the driver.
The car turns at the next intersection. “Mattia, send everyone away from the conservatory.”
“We haven’t sent anyone there,” Mattia says.
“Keep it that way.”
“You’re going alone?” he asks.
“Men followed my orders around her, so she left. I won’t surround her again.”
I end the call. Traffic stalls behind a delivery truck. I get out. The driver calls after me, but I close the door and move past the line of cars.
Snow catches at my collar and melts beneath it. My shoes slip once on the curb. I keep moving. The conservatory rises beyond the white ground, its glass roof dull beneath the winter sky.
Warm, wet air closes around me inside the entrance. Moisture settles on my face and coat.
Visitors move between beds of green plants. Water runs nearby. A child complains about the heat. His mother leads him toward the coat room.
I choose the first path with moss growing beside it.
The Palm House opens above me in green layers. Broad leaves overlap against the glass roof. Ferns cover the ground beneath taller plants. Water beads on every surface.
I pass two empty benches. The next room holds stone paths, orchids, a pool, and no Giada.
I move faster. My wet soles strike the floor. A visitor steps aside. Another points toward a sign I ignore.
Then blue shows through a break in the ferns. Giada sits on a bench near a low stone wall. Her gray coat lies folded beside her. The blue tardigrade on her shirt smiles across the room with its inaccurate mouth. Her suitcase stands near her shoes.
She bends over a patch of moss, close enough to examine the water gathered between its leaves. My knees buckle, and I catch myself against the stone wall. She is here, warm, unhurt, and alone. I walk toward her.
Her head turns when my shoes reach the stone path beside the bench. Her gaze moves to the silver pin on my lapel, then my face.
“You found me.”
“Yes.” I stop beyond her reach.
“I left the phone.”
“You did.” I remain where I am.
“And the card.”
“You left those too.” I point to the open end of the bench.
She checks the path behind me. “Did your guards follow the taxi?”
“They lost it.” I sit at the far end of the bench. Enough room remains between us for her coat.
“Then how are you here?”
“I asked where a woman would go after leaving her husband. The answers were stations, hotels, shelters, churches, and crowded public buildings. We sent men across the city.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“No. It explains why I failed.” I don’t move.
She rubs the seam of her trousers. The same motion she used in the basement while her father hurt her.
“I was asking where an ordinary missing person would go,” I say. “You aren’t a category in a report. So I asked where you would go.”
“Here.”
“Somewhere warm and quiet, with plants, moss, and enough moisture for tardigrades to move through the water around them.” I point toward the moss.
She releases the seam. “They might not be present in this moss,” she says. “It may have been treated. The conservatory may use pesticides or other controls.”
“I considered that.”
“You did not.” Her shoulders draw inward.
“No,” I admit. “I assumed moss plus moisture would give you a reasonable chance.”
“A sample would require a microscope to confirm it,” she says.
“I’ll buy the conservatory a microscope if they allow you to collect one.”
“They probably won’t,” she says.
“Then I’ll ask.”
Her attention stays on the moss. Water runs over stone in the next room. The air dampens the front of my shirt beneath my coat.
“You remembered,” she says.
“I remember everything you tell me.”
“Why?” she asks.
“Because you’re fascinating.”
Her mouth presses flat. “People say that about things they consider strange.”
“I say it about you because you give me facts I’ve never encountered and connections I would have missed. You correct me when I’m wrong. You tell the truth when every person around me has learned to hide it. Listening to you is never an obligation.”
“You listen to people for your work,” she says.
“I listen for lies, leverage, and threats. With you, I want the next fact.”
Her eyes close for two seconds. “There are more than fourteen hundred described species of tardigrade.”
“Then you have time to tell me many next facts.”
Her chin lifts toward me. “You should return home.”
“With you.” I move no closer.
“No.”
The answer empties my lungs. I keep my body where I placed it.
“Tell me what you need,” I say.
“I need you to accept the release.”
“What release?” I ask.
“From the marriage. Your attorneys can handle the legal process.”
“You want a divorce?” I ask.
“I don’t want one.”
My shoes plant against the stone floor. “Then we aren’t getting one.”
“What I want doesn’t change what is fair to you.”
“I determine what is fair to me.” My legs lock against the urge to stand.
“Not when the marriage began with an order.”
“Giada—” I stop when her palm rises.
“You didn’t choose me at the church.”
“I chose to obey,” I say.
“That is not the same.”
My throat burns around the admission. “No. It isn’t.”
She arranges her coat so its edges meet across her lap. “You can choose now.”
“I have.”
“You were assigned responsibility for me. You built routines out of duty. You protected me under Corsini rules. You had sex with me after I asked, and you wanted sex.”
“Stop.”
“Those facts are consistent with duty and physical desire. They are not proof that you want a life with me,” she says.
“You are my life.”
The coat bunches in her lap. “You don’t need to say that.”
“I needed to say it before today.”
“You should marry someone whole and normal. A wife who can attend a gala and remain in the room. A woman who doesn’t wear the same shirts or talk about one subject until people become bored. Someone who can give you children without worrying she will make them defective too.”
The bench scrapes the floor when I stand. Two visitors glance toward us. I don’t care. I face her, every plan and careful sentence gone.
“You think I don’t want you?”