Chương 5
He flinched.
“I hoped you would tell her before today,” Teresa said. “Then I hoped your father would. Then I saw her come down the stairs wearing that dress, and I understood none of you would say anything unless the dead climbed out of the lake and asked.”
Lucia bowed her head.
Vittorio walked to the drinks table and poured water into a crystal glass. His hand was steady again.
“This has gone far enough,” he said. “Teresa, you will go home. Permanently. My office will settle what is owed.”
“You dismissed me years ago in your mind,” she replied. “The paperwork can catch up.”
She turned toward Emilia.
“I am sorry about your sister.”
Emilia wanted to ask a hundred questions, but Teresa’s face warned her that the woman had already given more than she had prepared to give.
“Do you have proof?” Emilia asked.
“My brother kept a copy of the repair note. I do not know where it is now. His apartment was emptied after he died.”
“When?”
“Four years ago.”
“Did he leave boxes?”
“With me.”
Vittorio set down the water.
Teresa saw him react.
“There may be nothing,” she said. “I never opened most of them.”
“Where are they?” Vittorio asked.
“Somewhere you cannot enter with a key.”
For the first time that night, Matteo gave a small, humorless breath that might once have become a laugh.
Vittorio turned on him. “You find this amusing?”
“No.”
“Then stop behaving like a child being scolded. Your wife planned her way into our home. She searched my office and stole private documents. She is threatening your mother with a tragedy she cannot prove we caused. Decide where you stand.”
Matteo looked at Emilia.
Her shoulders were raised, and she could not force them down. The room had grown too cold. Her bare toes had gone numb against the marble.
“Unlocking the door would have been a start,” she said.
Pain moved across his face.
“I am sorry.”
“You said that while you were still standing in front of it.”
“I know.”
“You kept saying you needed five minutes.”
“I know.”
“You knew I was afraid.”
“Yes.”
“And you did it anyway.”
“Yes.”
His refusal to defend himself offered no comfort. Emilia had once believed accountability would sound cleansing. In reality, it sounded thin and late.
Lucia stood and removed a silver wrap from the back of the chair. She placed it on the floor within Emilia’s reach rather than around her shoulders.
“You may take my room,” she said. “The door locks from the inside. I will sleep elsewhere.”
Emilia looked toward the corridor. “I’m leaving the villa.”
“The drivers have been drinking,” Vittorio said. “It is after two.”
“I’ll call a car.”
“The road is crowded with guests departing.”
“I’ll wait outside.”
Lucia glanced toward the dark windows. “At least change clothes first.”
The idea of unfastening the gown alone made Emilia’s hands shake harder. Her maid of honor, Ruth, had left an hour earlier for a hotel in Como after Emilia insisted she was fine. Ruth had wanted to stay. Emilia had laughed and promised that wealthy families were too well staffed for loneliness.
Now, against every instinct, she wanted her friend.
She called.
Ruth answered on the first ring. “Tell me you finally escaped the speeches.”
Emilia could not speak.
Ruth’s voice changed. “Em?”
“I need you to come back.”
“What happened?”
“Please.”
“I’m coming.”
“No one should drive you. Get a car.”
“Are you hurt?”
“A little.”
“Is Matteo with you?”
Emilia looked at him.
“Yes.”
Ruth was silent for half a second. “Go somewhere with other people. Stay on the phone.”
“I’m with his parents.”
“That does not answer my question.”
“I’m in the corridor now.”
Emilia stepped through the open doors as she spoke. Lucia followed at a respectful distance. Teresa walked ahead and opened the east guest suite.
Matteo remained in the bridal room.
Vittorio stood beside him, holding the envelope.
Emilia saw the papers in his hand and stopped.
“That stays with me.”
Vittorio glanced down at the envelope. “It belongs to this family.”
“It may belong to a police investigation.”
“You have photographs.”
He knew she did not.
Emilia crossed back toward him.
Lucia moved between them again. “Give it to her.”
Vittorio’s disbelief was quiet. “You have not even heard what happened.”
“No. I have heard eight years of what did not happen. Give it to her.”
He looked at his wife for a long time.
Then he handed Emilia the envelope.
She tucked it beneath her arm. Ruth stayed on the phone, asking where she was, what room, whether the doors were open. Emilia answered while Teresa led her to the guest suite.
Before entering, Emilia turned.
Matteo had come to the bridal-room threshold. The amber corridor light divided his face, leaving one side in shadow.
“Emilia.”
She waited.
He glanced at the envelope.
For one foolish moment, she hoped he would tell her to keep it safe.
Instead he said, “The police will ask why you came here.”
“I know.”
“They will ask when you began looking into us.”
“I know.”
“They will ask whether you married me to get access.”
Ruth’s voice sounded faintly through the phone. “What is he saying?”
Emilia ignored it.
“Did I?” Matteo asked.
The question was not defensive now. It was worse. It was sincere.
Emilia looked at the man she had married beneath a canopy of white roses that afternoon. She remembered him standing at the altar with his hands clasped too tightly. She had believed he was nervous about vows, family expectations, the attention of two hundred guests.
Perhaps he had been waiting for someone to object.
“I don’t know when one reason stopped and the other began,” she said.
Matteo’s eyes lowered.
The answer wounded him. It wounded her too, which made it harder to regret.
May you like
She entered the east suite and closed the door.
Ruth arrived forty-three minutes later wearing sweatpants beneath a belted raincoat, though there had been no rain. She had put on mismatched shoes. One was black and one dark navy, a detail Emilia noticed with absurd clarity as Ruth crossed the room and stopped just short of embracing her.
