Chương 10
“Did she tell you?”
“Not then.”
“When?”
“Years later.”
“How many years?”
“Five.”
“Before you met me?”
“Yes.”
Emilia looked at him until he lowered his eyes.
“What did she say?”
“That she had been drinking at a dinner in Bellagio. She took the Livia because she did not want the driver to see her. She saw lights but thought they were farther away. There was an impact. She panicked.”
“Did she see Anna in the water?”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
“She said she heard someone calling.”
Emilia turned away.
The building across the courtyard blurred.
Matteo did not move closer.
“She heard my sister.”
“Yes.”
“And left.”
“Yes.”
“Then came home.”
“Yes.”
“And your father sent you to hide the boat.”
“Yes.”
Emilia pressed one hand against her ribs.
“Why did you marry me?”
His answer came too quickly. “Because I loved you.”
“That cannot be the whole answer.”
“No.”
“Then tell me the rest.”
He looked exhausted by the request, not because he lacked words but because he had spent years arranging them to conceal their order.
“When you told me about Anna, I should have confessed,” he said. “I nearly did. Then you said you had stopped believing anyone would ever know what happened. You said you wanted one part of your life that was not shaped by the lake.”
“I said that while you knew.”
“Yes.”
“And you let me thank you for understanding.”
“Yes.”
She almost struck him.
The impulse passed through her arm and vanished into her closed fist. She had never hit anyone. She did not want the first person to be a man who would accept it as proof of his remorse.
Matteo watched her hand.
“I married you because I loved you,” he said. “And because if you became my wife, I could pretend the truth no longer stood between us. I thought being good to you in the future might somehow pay for what I hid in the past.”
“You locked me in a room.”
“I know.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It is the only sentence I have that does not ask you to help me feel better.”
Emilia looked toward Giulia and Ruth. They were pretending not to watch.
“Did your mother know who I was?”
“Not until after the engagement.”
“What did she say?”
“She told me to end it.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I thought she was protecting herself.”
“She was.”
“I also thought she did not have the right to decide my life.”
“But you had the right to decide mine.”
“No.”
The answer was quiet.
Emilia hated him for understanding too late.
“What happens to her?” she asked.
“The prosecutors decide what can be charged and proved. Her attorneys say her memory is unreliable. My father says he was driving.”
“Your father is taking responsibility?”
“He has offered a statement claiming he struck the boat and invented my mother’s involvement to protect himself from another financial investigation.”
“That makes no sense.”
“It does if the goal is not to be believed. It creates uncertainty.”
Vittorio was not confessing. He was manufacturing competing truths.
“Will Lucia testify?” Emilia asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Did you ask her?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say?”
Matteo looked toward the traffic.
“She asked whether you had eaten.”
Emilia laughed once, without humor.
He flinched.
“She has spent years turning guilt into concern,” he said. “It lets her feel kind without becoming honest.”
“And you?”
“I turned mine into love.”
The sentence was almost too perfect. Matteo seemed to recognize it at the same moment Emilia did.
He shook his head. “That sounded rehearsed.”
“Was it?”
“For the last eight years, probably.”
A courier passed between them and apologized, though neither had been in his way.
Emilia looked at Matteo’s hands.
“Why did you say I had not told them everything?”
“Because I was afraid they would see only what I had done.”
“They should see what you did.”
“Yes.”
“And what I did.”
“Yes.”
“Did you expect my secret to save you?”
“For a few seconds.”
“At least that is honest.”
“It is also ugly.”
“Those are not opposites.”
Matteo nodded.
The five minutes had passed, though no one announced it.
Emilia walked back to Ruth and Giulia.
Matteo spoke behind her.
“I will not contest the separation.”
She stopped but did not turn.
“That is a matter for the lawyers,” she said.
It sounded cold, borrowed from someone stronger and less confused.
She kept walking.
The Bellandi family spent the next two months attempting to survive in separate ways.
Vittorio returned to work and appeared at meetings as though repetition could restore authority. He denied that any member of his family had knowingly concealed a fatal collision. His attorneys challenged the provenance of the mechanic’s photographs and suggested Teresa held a financial grievance.
Lucia withdrew from public events. Photographers captured her leaving a church in Como wearing dark glasses and the same champagne-blonde bob, still perfectly arranged. Commentators interpreted the image as remorse, manipulation, or proof of illness.
Matteo resigned from the family company.
His statement acknowledged moving the damaged launch and remaining silent after learning of Anna’s death. He did not excuse his age or his father’s influence. He also acknowledged locking Emilia in the bridal suite when she attempted to leave.
The statement did not mention love.
Emilia read it at her parents’ kitchen table.
Daniel placed a plate of sliced pears beside her and pretended he was not interested.
“He confessed to the door,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Can a person confess to a door?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know what he means. I am less certain what the newspapers mean.”
Her mother folded grocery coupons at the other end of the table, though she had not used a coupon in years.
“Does his statement help Anna’s case?” she asked.
“It may.”
“Then it is something.”
Daniel looked at her. “It is late.”
May you like
“Late things are still things.”
He picked up a pear slice and returned it to the plate.
