Chapter 29

With every step Violetta took across the pasticceria in the direction of the next meeting of the Secret League of Widowed Darners she felt her confidence drain and collect at her swollen ankles like wrinkles in her stockings.

The League had given her so much to live for over the past decades; all those broken hearts patched up and sent on their way. So many futures! So much hope! And now, this spectacular failure with Alessandro was going to bring her to her knees—the very ones currently clicking and clattering like the useless giant knuckle bones they were.

Lily was not the one for Alessandro, that was now painfully plain as day. Violetta should have confessed when Luciana’s toe first throbbed that her itch was nowhere to be found. She should have admitted there was no orange blossom.

Then Alessandro would have talked to Lily at the side of the road without the slightest thing being made of it, and this poor wretched woman could have proceeded to find her cheating husband and sort out whatever mess she was in.

Instead, Violetta’s foolish pride had placed Lily in the way of the widows’ favorite prospect, and when they found out, they would skin Violetta alive and make garter belts out of her for it would look to them as though she herself had broken Alessandro’s heart all over again.

“You have the face of a fish that’s been passed up on market day,” Luciana said as they approached the secret shelf and worked together to push it aside.

“Will you shut up and leave me alone!” exploded Violetta. “You have no idea how much I have to worry about right now. There’s Alessandro, there’s the cantucci, there’s your bones and my chest and everyone’s ears and eyes and Santa Ana di Chisa knows what else! You’re all very happy to leave everything up to me but when there’s a problem, I’m on my own and I’m sick of it. I’m thoroughly sick of it.”

With this, the shelf slid open and she stepped into the darkened recess, shaking with rage and fear.

Luciana, startled at her sister’s outburst, was slow to follow, so Violetta grabbed her by the sleeve and pulled at her. But on stepping over the threshold Luciana stumbled, her foot twisted sideways on the narrow top step, and her weak wrist did not have the strength to hold on to the slippery handrail or keep her upright against the wall.

In front of Violetta’s eyes she toppled silently like a sack full of soft potatoes to the landing six steps beneath them.

“No, no, no!” cried Violetta, scrabbling down as quickly as she was able behind her. “Oh, no, no, no!”

Luciana lay in a still heap. She looked so small. They were disappearing, the two of them, but she wasn’t ready to disappear yet, and she was even less ready for Luciana to.

She creakily lowered herself to the landing floor, sat beside her crumpled sister, and with trembling fingers, turned her face. Luciana’s eyes were closed, her face motionless. It was impossible to tell if she was breathing.

“Please don’t die, Lulu,” she begged, stroking the papery skin on her face. “Please don’t shut up and leave me alone. I can’t do it without you. I just can’t.”

Her sister lay unmoving, no rising of her lumpy little chest, no flicker in her wrinkled eyelids.

“We’re in this together, Lulu,” Violetta said, taking Luciana’s warm, limp hand. “We always have been. And we’ve lived through worse, my dear little sister. We’ve lived through much worse. We lived through our darlings being taken away from us. And before that we lived through me getting our darlings mixed up, which you let me fix, my little sweetheart, and which you forgave me for all those years ago. So many years ago! We decided then that sticking together was more important than anything else in the whole wide world and I’m sorry about the cantucci. I’m sorry if I’ve been stubborn. I’m sorry if I haven’t been listening to you. I’m scared, that’s all. I’m scared of what’s happening to me, of what I’m losing, of the life that seems to be draining out of me with every breath I take. I’m scared of not being wanted, of not being useful, of not being here. But more than any of that, I’m scared of not having you, Lulu. Of not having you. So please, please, please wake up. Please.”

And Luciana, who even when she was unconscious really did just want to please her big sister, obligingly woke up.

“We need help, Violetta,” she croaked. “We need help.”