It was still snowing. The small, undefined powdery flakes that had begun falling this afternoon had thickened and were clearly visible now in the light of the lamp at my side. I pulled the wool blanket tighter around my shoulders and glanced past the piano and the radio at the fireplace. The flames had weakened already.
I grabbed hold of one of the armchairs and dragged it closer to the fire, wood scraping against wood. Giovanni had spent the entire afternoon pulling two more horse carcasses from the river and hadn’t bothered to fetch more firewood.
My child stretched inside me, making me wince and smile at the same time. He’d been racing through the day today, and it didn’t appear as if the night would calm him. Not that I could blame him. The last thing I, too, wanted was to lie still while treachery went on all around me.
“Soon, amore,” I said. “In just two or three weeks, you’ll be here in my arms.”
A winter’s child.
I frowned at the memory of that morning with Buona, the pleasantness of our conversation, all the kindness she had shown me. It had just been an act to earn my trust. An act someone as thirsty for companionship as I had fallen for easily.
“She’ll be gone before you get here,” I murmured, laying a hand on my stomach. “I won’t let her come near you.”
How I’d manage that, I wasn’t sure yet, not with Giovanni against me. But once I did, everything would be back as it was. Giovanni would break loose from the spell the girl had cast on him and he could stop pretending the oaks were gone. He could focus on selling them and paying what he owed, allowing him to call the carabinieri and lift us from ruin. It would take longer to get the sawmill working, but we’d be fine. For my part, I would do my best to forget his confusion and disloyalty. He wasn’t truly to blame. Buona had managed to trick both of us.
The child shifted right beneath my hands. I smiled at the strange fluttering sensation.
“How insistent you are today.” I slid the fabric of my slip up and placed my hand on my bare skin. “I’m right here, see? You’re not alone.”
I tried to recognize what I was feeling through the layers that separated us, an elbow or a knee? A hand?
He kicked out and I exhaled sharply. “A bit more gently, amore.”
But he did it again, with even more force this time. It bent me over, a gasp leaping from me as the pain came again and then again. He was kicking at me.
“Stop, child, please.”
But he didn’t, and the strength behind the next strike vibrated against my palm. I could feel the shape of what had just touched me.
Something was wrong with it.
I pulled the slip up and watched my flesh rippling as the child moved, like he was readying himself for another hit.
It came quickly but it wasn’t the viciousness of the blow that made me clasp a hand to my mouth.
What pressed against the inside of my skin was not a hand or a foot but a small hoof. The child’s leg stretched and the hoof pushed forward, as if it wanted to kick its way right out of me. The silhouette had nothing human in it.
Bile rose up my throat, the back of my tongue stiffening, and I grabbed the first thing I could find, an old flower vase, before the bit of food I’d eaten spilled out of me. My eyes burned.
“Oh, Santissima Madre,” I gasped. “Please.”
But I didn’t know which words to use to articulate my plea. A plea for what?
I looked down at my stomach again, the room pulsing darker and brighter, darker and brighter, with each of my heartbeats. The movement had stopped, the being within me had receded. But the image of what I’d seen had not, and I doubted it ever would.
What did I have inside me?
I smothered a sob with my hands and felt the days and weeks and months of expectation shatter against me. I would birth a monstrosity, an abomination.
It was this place, Buona, her teas, the carcasses, it had all seeped into my womb and warped my child into something unspeakable. They had stolen my perfect son from me.
I made to cradle my stomach, but my hands jerked back as if scorched.
In the pounding silence of the horrid night, a door clicked open. The light footsteps that followed, the muffled sound of bare feet, came from Buona’s room and hurried down the passage, toward the courtyard.
She was creeping outside again. Hadn’t everything she’d done been enough? What betrayal was she planning now? What else would she steal from me?
The rage that I’d felt earlier roared inside me and propelled me across the room.
I slammed the door open, ignoring the snap of wayward electricity against my hands and bringing one of the sconces crashing to the floor in my wake, and lunged out into the corridor.
“Sibilla?”
I hurried toward the girl, the tears on my cheeks crackling dry in the burning heat of my anger. A quick glance told me I’d been right. She was bare of feet, her shoes clutched in her hands along with a heavy blanket, her coat all buttoned up. Here was my chance to prove the truth to my husband.
“Giovanni!” I called out.
At my shout, a shadow in the corner of the hall jerked. I flicked my gaze to it for just long enough to see that it was the black form I’d seen in the mill. It held its hands curled into claws at its side, but this time I knew it was just one of the intruders and I wouldn’t be cowed or distracted. In fact, I welcomed it, for it would let me show my husband what Buona was doing under his very nose.
“Giovanni!”
“You should be sleeping, Sibilla,” Buona said. “You need to rest.”
I walked closer, stepping into a pool of cool moonlight, my eyes shifting rapidly between her and the shadowed intruder, and she took a slight step back. “Where are you going?”
“Just outside for a moment. I wanted some fresh air.”
The ease with which she lied. “You have a window you can open in your room and it’s snowing.”
“That’s why I have a blanket, so I can watch it for a bit. It’s soothing.”
“You do realize you’re barefoot. Why would you walk the house without shoes? Is that also soothing?”
She frowned. “I didn’t want to wake you by stomping about.”
At least that had the ring of truth in it. I watched her for a moment, her grip tightening around her shoes, her eyes flicking from me to the floor and back. Cunning laced every one of her stares, each one of her words. There wasn’t anything kind or innocent about her, nothing that made her worthy of her name.
“You may have Giovanni fooled, but I know exactly what you’ve been doing,” I said. “I know who you’ve been helping. Or do you want to deny that, too?”
Her head snapped up, and this time she couldn’t disguise the fear in her face.
“You’ve been lying all of this time and I trusted you.” The tears began again. My arm jerked toward the shadow. “How could you let them into the house? You’ve ruined everything.”
“Sibilla,” Giovanni said from behind me, his voice dark with sleep, “you don’t think we’ve had enough of your nonsense today? Go to bed.”
“No, I will not. Look, she’s trying to sneak out! I’ve been trying to tell you she’s been working against us from the start and here’s proof. She’s even allowed one of—”
The intruder was gone. There was no one in the shadows.
“It was here. It was right there,” I said.
“You’re hysterical.”
I turned to face him. I caught his frown and the swift glance from me to Buona, the sleep and irritation evaporating from his features in a blink.
“I’m not hysterical.” I shook my head, a hand hovering over my stomach as even more tears spilled. “You don’t know the things she’s done. What she’s allowed.”
Giovanni swallowed. His breathing had sped up and his fingers had a slight tremble to them. “You’re—you’re right, I don’t. Why don’t we go into the bedroom and you can tell me everything?”
“You have to call the carabinieri.”
His jaw tightened but he nodded. “And I will, tomorrow morning. It’s too late now.”
“You have to look for the other intruder, then. He’s in here somewhere.”
I heard Buona start to speak, but Giovanni stopped her with a single look.
“As soon as we lock the girl in her room and you tell me what you’ve seen, I’ll begin doing just that.”
I held his gaze. He sounded sincere enough, but it had all been too easy. Nothing was ever easy with Giovanni. “You’re just humoring me. You don’t really believe a word I said.”
His exhaled, the tendons in his forearms shifting as he clenched his hands. “The truth is that I don’t know what to believe, Sibilla, because you still haven’t told me what’s been happening.” He walked closer to me, reached for my hand. “That’s why I want to have a calm conversation and go over everything clearly. That sounds like a reasonable plan, doesn’t it?”
His tone made my teeth grind together. He sounded like he was trying to keep a creature of the woods from bolting. Or biting.
Before I could do anything, he took a step forward and latched his hand around my wrist.
“Just give it here, Sibilla.”
With a frown, I looked down and saw him pry open my hand, releasing the piece of jagged glass I clutched. A piece of the sconce that had fallen and shattered.
I shook my head as blood trickled to the floor. When had I grabbed it? I had no memory of it.
Giovanni tossed the glass across the courtyard, where it further cracked, but didn’t release my wrist. Instead, he tightened his grip.
I pulled to get loose but he tugged me forward, taking hold of my other arm.
“Stop it,” I said.
“This is for your own good,” he said and started dragging me. “You’re not yourself.”
“No! Let me go!” I tried to plant my legs but the tiles were too slick, my house slippers easily giving way to Giovanni’s strength.
“Help me, would you?” Giovanni called to Buona.
The girl ran toward me, and I could only howl as she took hold of one of my arms. I bent my legs and pulled down with every bit of strength I had, trying to drag the two of them to the floor, tip them off balance. Anything that would give me the moment I needed to escape.
“Sibilla, you’ll hurt the child,” Buona said, fighting to remain upright.
As if she cared one bit.
I dug my nails into her shoulders, making her hiss, but she held on as Giovanni gave me one violent pull.
The force of it made my feet slip from under me and I fell forward, their grip on my arms the only thing that kept me from hitting my stomach against the floor. Even so, something in my side stretched beyond its limit. I gasped at the swift pain.
Giovanni forced me up again and released a hand for just long enough to slap me. Once.
The blow burned against my skin. It rang through my bones like a note through a tuning fork and brought all of me to a stop.
“That’s enough,” he said. “If you keep struggling, I’ll do it again. I won’t stand any more of this nonsense in my house.”
I could feel all of me was shaking one instant, and the next, I had lost my body again. When Giovanni dragged me forward, I sensed my legs in a muffled manner, as if there were layers and layers between me and the movement that he was forcing.
Something was wrong with my vision as well, for I was watching myself be taken to the music room from somewhere over my left shoulder. I knew I should have felt panic, rage, something at this betrayal and viciousness, but I was a vast blackness. Filled with nothing but echoes, like a porcelain figurine.
Giovanni led me into the room and forced me down onto one of the armchairs near the weak fire. The lamps winked under a surge of electric buzzing.
“Stay with her,” he said, looking at Buona. “I don’t think she can climb out the window in her condition, but I’m not in the mood to chase her across the woods.”
“And what we talked about—” she started.
“I already gave you an answer.”
“But this changes things.”
Giovanni shook his head and strode to the door. “I’ve had enough of all of this for tonight. You have the other key to this room?”
She nodded.
They’d planned this, then. They’d been waiting for a moment to do it and, like the fool I was, I had given it to them.
“Don’t let her do anything stupid,” he said and left the room. The lock clicked into place.
Buona sighed, running a hand across her forehead. There was blood on one of her shoulders, likely from my injured palm. She murmured something I couldn’t catch and walked to the fireplace, adding a log to the starving flames.
A tingling sensation was returning to my feet and the dullest hint of an ache crept up on my side, but the rest of me could have been smudged away like a charcoal drawing and nothing would have changed. I didn’t think I would have felt it if Buona stuck one of my hands into the flames.
“I am sorry, Sibilla,” she said. She pulled the other armchair closer to the fire and to me. “None of this should have gone as it did. You’re not hurt, apart from your hand?”
I said nothing.
“I can bandage it up. Let me see.”
I met her eyes. “I don’t want a single thing from you.”
She opened her mouth to say something else, to spew some lie at me, perhaps even to gloat, but I turned away, toward the fire.
She had won. I was a prisoner in my own home, just as she and whoever she was in league with had planned from the start.
I’d allowed her to burrow herself in, even into my womb, and now it was much too late to pry her out.
Then the thought struck me like a blow: if I couldn’t remove her, I’d remove myself. And her own treachery would give me the opportunity I needed to do exactly that.
* * *
I heard the girl stand, but I kept my eyes closed, my breathing as deep and steady as I’d forced it to be for the past half hour.
If I’d needed any more proof of her deception, this would have provided more than enough of it. I’d stopped her from going outside earlier, from taking food to the intruder she was helping, and so she needed to do it now despite the instructions Giovanni had given her to watch me.
This would be my chance.
Buona tapped lightly across the room, stopping every few seconds to make certain I’d not woken. My heart raced at the click of the lock and the creak as she attempted to open the door as softly as possible, but I remained still. Even as she stepped out of the room, locking me in once more, I didn’t dare twitch a finger.
I waited for silence.
And then I pushed myself off the chair, tucking the blanket on my lap under my arm and grabbing the one Buona had left behind before hurrying to one of the windows. The one I knew, from a morning of cleaning, opened without too much difficulty.
I tugged at the handle until it gave. Cold air sliced at me, but I didn’t allow myself to think of my flimsy slippers or my threadbare housedress. I needed to make it to the cave leading up to the oaks and wait there for morning, when I could look for help without fear of tripping over my own feet. The blankets I carried would be enough to keep me from freezing in the few hours left of night.
Giovanni’s words rang in my ears as I gave a hop, just high enough to be able to sit on the edge of the window. Even without pregnancy weighing me down, I’d never been particularly agile, I knew that, but I also wasn’t an invalid. This time, he’d underestimated me.
Not just this time.
I swung my legs out into the night and felt for the ground. I bit back a hiss when the cold, crunching denseness of snow met my feet instead of the bare earth I expected. Had it really snowed this much? My toes were already soaked.
Unless I wanted to wake Giovanni while trying to find proper shoes, there was nothing for it but to continue, wet slippers or not.
I hopped down with a wince and wrapped the two blankets around me before starting off down the side of the house, toward the kitchen courtyard and the woods beyond.
The moonlight was a pale sliver, just enough to let me see a few steps in front of my pluming breath. In the forest, not even this light would reach me.
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll manage,” I whispered. “I have to.”
My hands went to cradle my stomach before I remembered the hooves. The corruption I carried. I wiped away the beginning of furious tears and hurried on.
The silhouette of the ancient dovecote appeared even sooner than I expected, and I exhaled in relief because the house was still silent behind me. I’d have enough time to slip into the forest. Every extra second before Buona discovered me missing would help me disappear. If I had to, if they came looking in the cave, I’d hide up among the oaks themselves.
I was mere steps from the collapsed stone wall when the dark figure appeared. It slid from the shadow of a tree, its lurching steps silent in the snow, the hulking shape of it blocking my path in moments.
I stopped, swallowing down the jolt of fear. I had to get past the intruder.
“Let me through,” I said. “I don’t care what you’re planning on doing or who you work for. I just want to leave.”
The figure remained silent.
My hands trembled as I clutched the blankets tighter around me, feeling the pulse of each second I wasted.
I shifted, ready to go around the man even if I had to climb over pieces of fallen stones, and he jerked to the side, blocking my way once more.
“But you told me to get out! That’s what I’m doing.”
The man made a wet click in the back of his throat. I tried to see his face, see if I could make out his features, his expression, but he had to be wearing a hood or a mask because peering into that darkness revealed nothing.
The slight trembling I’d felt grew under the pressing silence. The man’s eyes were locked on me—I could feel them, his stare heavy.
“Let me pass.”
He started making a grinding sound. Was it his teeth? But it was so loud he’d have to be cracking them under that force and the sound was almost . . . mechanical.
A shout came from the house.
I had no time left.
I started forward, ready to lunge past the intruder, but I wasn’t quick enough. The man swung his arm so rapidly I only heard the whistle of it and I gasped as something sharp sliced into my arm.
Just go. Run.
I darted to the side, and this time the man’s weapon tore into my back, the pain of it knocking all breath from me. With a moan, I stumbled forward, but the next cut, into my thigh, dropped me to my knees.
“It’s too late,” he said. The words came as if from jaws that had been fused together.
“Please.” I pressed a shaking hand to my bleeding thigh. The snow in front of me faded out and then back in with each of my heartbeats.
That grinding began again.
“Sibilla!”
The man was right; it was too late, for a pair of hands now clutched at my arms, pulling me up.
“He’s there,” I said. My teeth chattered.
“Stop it. There’s no one,” Giovanni said, his hands tighter than Buona’s as they latched on to me. “What have you done to yourself?”
I didn’t even bother to look behind me when they began dragging me away, back to the prison they’d made of my home.
“You’re so foolish, Sibilla,” Giovanni hissed.
And, considering everything, I had to agree with him on that.
* * *
Buona stepped into the room as I began playing again. The tray she carried jangled as she set it down to lock the door behind her, making my teeth grind together. She made to turn the dial on the radio but I banged my hands down on the keys. I bit my lips to keep from flinching at the pain in my arm.
“I just want to find you a station with music playing,” she said.
“Leave it.” The static was soothing, unchanging and steady. It allowed me to get as close to sleep as I was managing these days.
With a sigh, she brought the tray toward the piano. “Are you sure you do not want some of the stew I made? Or the roasted potatoes from last night?”
I didn’t even look at her.
“At least let me bring you a bit of wine, as the doctor prescribed.”
“No.” I took the glass of sugar water and the plate of bread she held out to me. Hunger wasn’t something I felt much of any longer, but the sweetened water would take away some of the trembling that had started since I’d been caged.
“You and your child need more than that.” She shook her head. “You need a real meal.”
She must have thought me very foolish indeed if she expected me to trust her with my meals. And besides, even if I were willing to take that risk, I was finding it difficult to stomach anything but sweet water and plain bread. The creature I had within me refused all else.
I took a sip and followed Buona’s movements as she walked to the fireplace and added a log to the fire, kneeling to worry the embers with the poker. With a sigh, she sat back on her heels. Her gaze fixed on the flames that only just managed to keep away the chill from the deepening winter.
A quick shove to unbalance her and I could grab the keys in her trouser pocket. Yes, and then? With my injured thigh, I’d not be quick enough to unlock the door before she reached me.
Buona stood and I looked away, biting into the bread.
“Sibilla, your husband is destroying himself chopping down pine trees,” she said. “He’s spent hours out there already today, and it’s still snowing rather heavily.” She turned to me. “Perhaps you could say something to him before he falls ill. Ask him to sit with you for a bit, out of the cold.”
I shook my head.
I didn’t want to see him. I was tired of hearing the same refrain from him as I’d heard for the past couple of days, of the supposed missing trees, of how we’d not make it through the winter, of how he needed someone to offer him support and comfort, and of how he did not need a child right now, or a wife who was always hysterical. As if he were trying to excuse his choice of turning to Buona. He kept lying about everything, and I couldn’t stand it any longer. It wasn’t enough to keep me captive, but I had to forgive and fuss over his actions as well?
The recording of the horse’s cries began again, undimmed by the boards that now shuttered the windows, and I took another sip of the water before turning back to the piano.
The now constant screaming was wearing on me, mostly because I couldn’t convince my captors to allow me access to the piano or even the radio at night. Humming in the bedroom where they forced me to retire each evening wasn’t nearly as effective, and it took much more out of me. If they would just let me play through the night, things would be easier.
“Why not try another piece of music?” Buona said, drawing nearer. “I’m sure there are other beautiful ones.”
“No.” I barked out the word. “This is the only one that stops it.”
“Stops what?”
I kept my silence. I shouldn’t have said anything at all. There was no point to it, for they both still pretended they didn’t hear the recording.
“Sibilla, stops what?”
I exhaled sharply and was about to tell her to leave me be when a kick in my stomach robbed me of breath. My lips tightened with the pain.
“Are you all right?”
As if she cared.
I breathed slowly, feeling the being inside me shift about, almost seeing the floating hooves ready to strike me again at any moment. Bile rose to my mouth. I wanted it out.
“You must be excited about seeing the baby soon,” Buona said. Her voice was too bright, like false jewels. “Have you thought of a name yet?”
“No.”
She nodded. “Some women wait until the child is born and manages to survive the first few weeks. My own mother didn’t name me until the day of my baptism, and even then, she refused to call me anything but bebè until months later. To avoid tempting fate or the devil, or something of the sort. No reason to take any risks, I suppose.”
I turned to look at her fully, my hands clenched away from my bulging midsection. “I’m not going to name it at all, because it is not my child.”
She frowned and searched my face. “What do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean. You did it to me.”
Buona’s cheeks lost a shade of color. “Sibilla, I didn’t do anything to you.”
I scoffed.
“I would never harm you or your child.”
“I’ve already told you it is not my child.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but a knock cut off her words.
I turned to look at the girl, who stood, locked in place, as a murmur came from behind the door. It was a man’s voice, I could tell that much, but it wasn’t Giovanni’s.
The radio’s hiss filled the room as the seconds passed and neither of us moved.
And then the voice said one word, clearly: “Buona.”
The girl gave a jolt like someone had flung boiling water on her. “No,” she said as she spun around. “You can’t be here. Not now.”
She hurried to the door, her hand sliding into her trouser pocket. This was my chance.
I rose quickly, leaving the being inside me to manage the rush of movement as best it could, and waited for the girl to use the key. I walked closer. Ready to rush past whoever or whatever stood behind that door to get away from Giovanni and her and this place. And if the intruder and his blade appeared . . . I’d run even faster.
“No, you have to go back,” Buona said, turning the key.
The lock clicked open.
I didn’t allow myself a breath of hesitation. I rushed at her and shoved her aside.
She yelped as she lost her balance, her flaying arms grabbing hold of the small table by the door and sending it crashing alongside her.
I didn’t stay to watch, I didn’t pause to see who had called her, but ran.
“Sibilla!”
A man in a blue cap had already darted ahead of me, racing down the corridor. The trespasser from all those days ago and, I suddenly realized, probably the same one who’d played at shadows to scare me. As I took the corner, I saw him yank the front door open and disappear into the afternoon in a moment.
I winced as the bed slippers I’d not bothered to take off this morning skidded against the stone floors as I hurtled across the courtyard in his wake. I gripped the arches, running from one to the other to keep from falling, cursing at myself for my stupidity, but there was the door. Open in front of me. All I had to do was go through it and keep running until I found a house, one other than Piero’s. It would take Buona a minute or two to get to Giovanni, wherever he was in the woods, giving me more time to get ahead before they gave chase or ran for the telephone. I could do this.
Steps rang out behind me. Too close. “Stop!”
I lunged for the door and raced outside.
Something hard rammed my side just as my slippers landed on the slush of snow that had collected by the entrance.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” Buona said and pushed me again as she ran past me.
The soles of my feet, now soaked, slid under the force of her blow. I gasped as I lost my footing and the weight of my body sent me careening across the layer of ice the snow had concealed.
To the very edge of the colonnade.
I slammed into the low balustrade and dug my fingernails into the stone to keep from tumbling over it. I felt one of my nails snap off at the root but the pain never reached me because my eyes were locked on the long fall beneath me.
I had seen this view before. The blanket of snow in the abyss below.
Leonardo smiled at us from across our dining table as he lifted the wineglass. “To our future,” he said. Next to him, his wife did the same. She tipped her golden-locked head in my direction and then turned to Giovanni.
Their eyes met.
I couldn’t swallow the sip of wine I’d taken.
Panting, I gripped down on the balustrade. “Stop,” I said.
Knowing it wouldn’t.
“I wonder where Emilia and Giovanni have disappeared to,” Leonardo said, sitting back in the chair and sipping the last of his wine. “They’ve truly missed a concert worthy of any stage, Sibilla.”
“You’re too kind. I’m afraid I tend to bore Giovanni with my playing.” I rose from the piano, a strange, fever-like nervousness in my limbs. “I’ll go fetch them so we can have coffee with the exquisite amaretti biscuits you’ve brought.”
I left the room and walked to the kitchen, the only reasonable place in our small home where they could have waited out the music. In their soft voices there was something that stopped me from calling out.
I looked in.
Giovanni and Emilia stood much too close to one another, her hand on his arm, her gaze holding his in an almost physical grip.
“Please,” I said.
But there was no pleading with the red, all of that red my memory held, which fell over me now like a shroud.
* * *
I gripped the tin lunch pail tighter and chided myself for leaving my gloves at the house. Giovanni was right; I was always forgetting something. Even last week, for the dinner we’d had with Leonardo and his wife, I’d forgotten to buy the bread Giovanni had specifically asked for.
I would have to start making a list to check before stepping over our threshold.
“Yes, and I’m sure I’ll forget where I’ve put that, too,” I muttered.
Stomping my feet lightly to keep the cold from my toes, I waited for a car to pass and crossed the street. A man tipped his hat at me and I nodded in acknowledgment, though I felt my cheeks warm. For I couldn’t imagine what he thought of seeing a young woman in my condition crossing one of the less well-lit parts of Torino on her own once evening had fallen.
I hurried on.
The glow from streetlamps made it more difficult to see anything but the silhouette of the sawmill in front of me, the black mass of the building still making me feel as if I were falling backward every time I looked up at it. I still couldn’t quite grasp the size of it, even after having strolled down this same street every day with Giovanni while we’d gone out. I smiled at the memory of those walks, or thought I did, because the cold had numbed my lips.
I passed by the main entrance to the mill, trying not to flinch at the honk of a horn somewhere behind me, and continued down to the back one, the one that was left open when people were still working after hours.
Nerves bubbled up in my stomach.
I looked down at the lunch pail holding a simple cena of bread, cheese, salami, and wine.
Giovanni was not one for surprises, but this couldn’t possibly bother him, could it? He could continue with his work on the patent while we ate. We didn’t have to talk, and I wouldn’t distract him. I wouldn’t even ask to turn on the radio.
He’d been working so terribly hard lately, missing meals to ensure we had a better future, that it seemed the very least I could do was to bring him a bit of domestic cheer.
“If he doesn’t like it, I can just leave him the food, give him a kiss, and go home,” I murmured, taking the side street that led to the snow-covered yard and to the warehouse.
I hurried past the piles and piles of logs waiting for the saw and pulled the back door open. The darkness of the building pressed against me at once, and I waited for my eyes to adjust before moving.
“Because we don’t need an unpleasant fall,” I said, rubbing a hand against the child that seemed to be growing by the hour. There were still three months before she was born, for I was certain it would be a girl, and I didn’t know how I’d accommodate her if she kept up this pace.
“I suppose we’ll manage, won’t we?”
At least our doctor was pleased with the progress we’d made.
Once I could see the outlines of walls and doors and machinery, I started down the series of interlocked hallways to reach the stairs that would take me to the third floor.
Not the easiest of climbs in my condition, and one that left me puffing in what Giovanni would have said was without question unladylike, but no one was watching. I leaned against the wall for a moment to catch my breath, to straighten my skirt, to brush back the hair I’d curled just this morning, wishing I’d touched some gel to it before leaving the house. To look presentable.
The murmur of Giovanni’s voice came from the only room where the light was on. Likely Leonardo had remained behind to help him.
Oh, I should have added more food to the lunch pail. How silly of me not to think of it.
I smiled at the thought of all three of us sitting together, even to a threadbare meal. Leonardo was always so kind.
Perhaps he’d even encourage Giovanni to show me a bit of the plans, which until now my husband had not wanted to bore me with.
I walked as softly as I could manage down the short corridor to his office. I wanted to see their looks of surprise as I stepped into the room, lunch pail in hand.
“You can’t imagine how lovely it is to see you,” Giovanni said. “It’s been an absolute horror at home.”
My hand froze, midway to pushing on the half-opened door.
“I can’t get her to speak of anything but the child.”
“That’s normal, isn’t it?”
It took me a second to recognize the voice.
“I don’t know, but I can hardly stand it. Sometimes I’m afraid I’ll throttle her just to get a few moments of silence.”
“That’s rather unkind,” Emilia said, but I could hear the laughter in her words.
A chill descended on me, though my face was afire.
“The truth is often unkind.”
I heard the tap of heels as someone walked across the room.
“Won’t you offer a girl a bit of something to drink?”
“I’m afraid I have a shortage of glasses.” The trickle of pouring liquid. “Here, have some of mine.”
I made myself lean forward just enough to peer into the room, when what I really wanted was to disintegrate.
All I could see from this angle was a deep-red coat that rested on the chair in front of Giovanni’s desk, one made of a velvet so fine I could feel its softness under my fingertips. Light danced along its fibers.
“And your present? Do you like it?”
The warmth in Giovanni’s voice brought on the first tears.
“You know very well I do. The color is exquisite.”
“Then where is the gratitude?”
A shift of clothing and I couldn’t stop myself, I leaned forward until I could see them. Emilia was sitting on my husband’s lap, her arms wrapped around his neck, his face turned up to hers like he was facing the summer sun.
“I am grateful, signore,” she murmured.
“It’s ingegnere.”
Her laughter sparkled as golden as her hair. She leaned forward and kissed him.
I turned around, my arms and legs shaking so violently I had to cling to the wall as I forced myself to walk back the way I’d come. The lunch pail scraped against the bricks, the bottle of wine and the glasses I’d brought because I knew Giovanni didn’t have more than one in his office tapping against each other.
He didn’t love me. Not a bit.
The thought was a whirlpool that took everything down with it.
The disgust in his voice when he’d spoken of me sent waves of hot shame through my body. He didn’t want the child, or me, and he would abandon us both when a good enough opportunity presented itself. I could see that now. And then what would we do?
We had no one and nothing.
My mother was in a casket. My newly married father hadn’t bothered to invite me to his wedding, and if he’d received my letter telling him of my pregnancy, he’d given no indication of it. The few friends I’d had before marriage had drifted further away with each invitation Giovanni had told me to turn down. A bore, all of them, he had said.
And I, too, was a bore. A nuisance he wanted to throttle.
My ribs seemed to turn to stone. Was I still walking?
The darkness of the corridor grew thicker and the stairs were not where they should have been. I couldn’t remember if I’d made the right turn or any turn at all.
The lunch pail slipped from a hand I couldn’t feel anymore, its contents spilling, glass shattering.
I left it and stumbled forward.
What should I do now? How could I go home and lie down in the bed we shared? Should I pretend nothing had happened and wait for my husband to unstitch me from his life? But how would I pretend when all I would be able to see was that red coat, those pale hands in my husband’s hair?
A sob ripped through my lips before I even felt it, so that I had to press them tightly to contain the worst of it.
“Is someone there?” Giovanni called from much too far away.
The child inside me shifted in protest as I started running, my shoulder scraping against the wall of a passage I didn’t recognize. I could almost see myself from above, a panicked mare running blindly through a forest of black corridors, plunging ahead with nothing but fear rattling through her head.
“Who’s there?”
I blinked and found myself outside all at once.
I stood on the edge of a platform I’d seen many times from below. There were a few guardrails, but none in front of me.
I looked down. Far below me, there was just snow.
The chaos I’d felt a moment ago was gone, having broken like a fever, leaving behind only the residue of tears on my cheeks. I felt a stillness I’d perhaps never experienced before, not standing beside my mother as she stirred a vat of chocolate, or even sitting with her at the piano. Absolute peace at being certain of what I was going to do. I wrapped my arms around my child.
“We’ll be all right,” I said. “You don’t have to worry.”
I didn’t turn at the gasp that came from behind me, but instead took a step forward.
And fell.
My eyes opened and closed and opened again to a woman with gold for hair. Something was wrong with my chest, for I couldn’t draw breath. My mouth was filled with liquid metal.
Voices and footsteps.
And then the cruelest curtain of red falling over me, tangling me in its folds until there was but darkness.