6. Liana
— ? —
Liana
Bianca’s hand was sticky in mine, ice cream melting faster than she could eat it. It was a perfect afternoon on Bellevue Avenue.
“Mama, mine is dripping,” Bianca announced, holding up her cone like evidence of a crime.
“I can see that, baby.” I pulled a napkin from my purse and wrapped it around the base of her cone. “Try eating it faster than it melts.”
“I’m trying.” She licked a long stripe up the side and got ice cream on her nose.
Bianca chattered beside me about the flavors she wanted to try next time.
I listened and nodded and made sounds in the right places, and for a few minutes I let myself pretend that everything was fine. That my husband hadn’t walked out on me three nights ago without looking back.
That I hadn’t been sleeping alone in a bed that still smelled like him.
We turned the corner onto the main stretch of Bellevue, where the cafés spilled out onto the sidewalk and the old money of Newport pretended to be casual. I was scanning for a bench where we could sit and finish our cones without dripping on our clothes when I saw him.
Dominic.
He was sitting at a sidewalk table outside one of the nicer cafés, leaning back in his chair with a coffee in front of him.
He was wearing the charcoal suit I had picked out for him last spring.
He looked relaxed in a way I hadn’t seen in weeks, his whole body loose and easy, his attention completely focused on the person sitting across from him.
A woman.
She was blonde, her hair cut sharp at the jaw. Her clothes were expensive, the kind of outfit that said money without having to shout about it. She was leaning toward him across the small table, one manicured hand resting near his coffee cup, and she was laughing at something he had just said.
She was beautiful.
And my husband was looking at her like she was the most interesting person in the room.
My feet stopped moving. My hand tightened around Bianca’s.
“Mama?” Bianca tugged at my fingers. “Why did we stop?”
I couldn’t answer. I was watching Dominic lean in closer to this woman, watching his mouth move as he said something that made her laugh again, watching the ease between them that I hadn’t felt from him in weeks.
He looked present. Engaged. Alive in a way he hadn’t been with me since before the war with Grassi started.
Who was she?
Why was he here, in the middle of a workday afternoon, when he had told me this morning that he had back-to-back meetings until dinner?
“Mama.” Bianca tugged again. “Your ice cream is dripping on your hand.”
She was right. Chocolate was running down my wrist, pooling in the creases of my palm. I barely felt it.
“Papa!” Bianca’s voice rang out across the sidewalk. “Mama, look, it’s Papa! Papa, we’re over here!”
She dropped my hand and took off running before I could stop her, weaving between pedestrians, her ice cream dripping a trail behind her.
No undoing it now.
I watched Dominic’s head snap up at the sound of her voice. Watched his eyes find Bianca first, then track back to find me standing frozen on the sidewalk with chocolate melting down my arm.
He stood up from the table, and Bianca crashed into his legs and wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Papa, we got ice cream! Are you having a meeting, is that lady your friend?”
I walked over. What else could I do?
The blonde woman had stood up too, and now I could see her properly. She was taller than me, leaner, with cheekbones that could cut glass and eyes the color of winter sky. She was smiling at Bianca with the practiced warmth of someone who did not particularly like children but knew how to pretend.
“Liana.” Dominic’s voice was smooth, controlled, giving nothing away. “This is Angela.”
As he said it, his hand absentmindedly settled on Angela’s back.
I felt my smile go tight.
“Angela, this is my wife, Liana.” He gestured between us like we were business associates being introduced at a conference. “And this is Bianca.”
“So this is the wife.” Angela’s smile was beautiful and did not reach her eyes. “He talks about you constantly.”
“He doesn’t talk to me at all these days, so that’s news to me.”
The words came out before I could stop them, and I watched Angela’s perfect eyebrows rise a fraction of an inch.
Beside me, Dominic’s hand twitched on her back, but he didn’t remove it. He didn’t step away from her. He didn’t do the one small thing that would have told me this was nothing.
“Liana,” he said, and there was a warning in his voice.
“What?” I kept my eyes on Angela. “I’m just being honest. You’ve been so busy lately, we barely see you at home. It’s nice to know you’re finding time for coffee with old friends.”
Angela’s smile sharpened. “Dominic and I go way back. We practically grew up together.”
“How wonderful for you both.”
“He never mentioned me?”
“He must have forgotten.” I tilted my head. “Strange, given how close you apparently are.”
“We lost touch for a few years.” Angela’s hand drifted to Dominic’s arm, her fingers resting lightly on his sleeve. “But now I’m back in Newport, and it’s like no time has passed at all.”
I watched the easy familiarity of the touch. Watched my husband stand there and let another woman put her hands on him like she had every right to.
“How nice for you,” I said. “I’m sure you have a lot of catching up to do.”
“We do, actually.” Angela’s smile didn’t waver. “Dominic’s been filling me in on everything I’ve missed. The business, the family, all of it. He’s been so generous with his time.”
“Mama.” Bianca tugged on my shirt, oblivious to the tension crackling between the adults. “My ice cream is almost gone. Can I have more?”
“Not right now, baby.”
“But I ate it all and I was really good about not dripping.”
“I said not right now.”
Bianca’s face fell, and I felt a stab of guilt for snapping at her.
None of this was her fault. She was five years old and she had no idea that her mother was standing here watching her father touch another woman like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“I like your dress,” Angela said to Bianca, crouching down to her level with that practiced warmth that made my skin crawl. “Very pretty.”
Bianca stared up at her. Her eyes moved over Angela’s face, her hair, her clothes, and then her nose wrinkled.
“Why are you wearing so much perfume?”
Angela blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Bianca.” I put my hand on her shoulder.
“It’s the kind they use at church.” Bianca was undeterred. “When they wave the smoke around and everyone coughs. You smell like that.”
Angela’s smile froze on her face. Behind her, I heard Dominic make a strangled sound that might have been a suppressed laugh.
“It’s called incense, baby,” I said, fighting to keep my own face straight. “And it’s not polite to comment on how people smell.”
Angela straightened up, her composure slightly cracked. “She’s certainly… observant.”
“She gets that from me.” I smiled, and this time it was genuine.
The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut.
Dominic’s hand finally left Angela’s back. “Liana, it’s not what you’re-”
“I didn’t say it was anything.” I held his gaze.
Angela glanced between us, reading the tension, and something flickered in her eyes. Satisfaction? Amusement? Whatever it was, I didn’t like it.
“I should let you get back to your family,” she said smoothly, picking up her purse from the back of her chair. “Dominic, we’ll continue our conversation later.”
“Angela-”
“It was lovely to meet you, Liana.” She extended her hand to me, and I took it because refusing would have been petty. Her grip was firm and cold. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. I’m going to be working closely with your husband for the foreseeable future.”
“Dominic didn’t mention that,” I said.
“Didn’t he?” Angela’s smile was all teeth. “I’m surprised. It’s quite a big arrangement. I’ll be helping him with the Grassi situation, among other things. He needed someone he could trust, and we go back so far…”
She trailed off, letting the implication hang in the air.
“Well.” I released her hand. “How fortunate that you were available.”
“Wasn’t it just.” She turned to Dominic and put her hand on his chest, right over his heart, in a gesture so intimate it made my stomach turn. “I’ll call you tonight to go over the details.”
He nodded, and she walked away, unhurried and confident, her heels clicking on the sidewalk.
“Who is she?” I asked when she was out of earshot.
“I told you. An old friend. We grew up together.” Dominic’s voice was careful, measured. “She’s been living in Europe for the last few years, but she’s back now, and she has connections that could help with the Grassi problem.”
“What kind of connections?”
“The useful kind.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Liana.” He sighed and rubbed his face with his hand. “Can we not do this here? In front of Bianca?”
I looked down at our daughter, who was watching us with that worried expression I hated seeing on her face. She was too young to understand what was happening, but she could feel the tension, could sense that something was wrong between her parents.
“Fine,” I said. “We’ll talk about it at home.”
“I have to go back to the office.”
“Of course you do.”
“Liana-”
“Papa, are you coming home for dinner?” Bianca grabbed his hand and looked up at him with hopeful eyes. “Mama’s making the chicken I like. The one with the crispy stuff on top.”
Dominic’s face softened as he looked down at her. “I’ll try, piccola.” He crouched down and kissed her forehead. “I’ll try really hard.”
He stood up and looked at me, “We’ll talk tonight,” he said.
“Will we?”
“I promise.”
I laughed, and it came out bitter. “Your promises don’t mean what they used to, Dominic.”
He flinched. Actually flinched, like I had hit him.
Good.
He walked away without another word, heading back toward wherever he’d parked his car, and I stood on the sidewalk with our daughter’s hand in mine and watched him go.
“Mama?” Bianca tugged at my fingers. “Are you mad at Papa?”
“No, baby.”
“You look mad.”
“I’m not mad.” I forced a smile and squeezed her hand. “Come on. Let’s go home and wash this ice cream off before it dries.”
We walked back toward the house, Bianca chattering about the dog she wanted and the lady who smelled like church and whether butterflies could taste ice cream, and I listened and nodded and made sounds in the right places.
But my mind was elsewhere.
I kept seeing Dominic’s hand on Angela’s back. The easy familiarity of it. The way his fingers had known exactly where to rest, like they’d been there before, like touching her was muscle memory.
He hadn’t stepped away from her when I walked up. He hadn’t removed his hand. He hadn’t done a single thing that would have told me she was nobody, that I had nothing to worry about, that I was still the woman he chose.
I didn’t think he was sleeping with her. Not yet, anyway. I knew my husband, knew his tells, knew the difference between a man with a secret and a man with a guilty conscience.
But that almost made it worse.