Chapter 31
Ingrid and Daniel meandered away from the river up the Via Tornabuoni.
It had moved her, almost unbearably, to hear him talk about the nightmare of returning his almost-adopted baby, but he himself seemed a little distanced from it. There was more to this sad story, she was sure.
“So what happened?” she asked as they slowed down outside one of the designer shops for her to admire the window display. “Your wife fell out of love with you after she gave up on having children?”
“She fell out of everything,” Daniel said. “I think I was just included in the package.”
“You think she was depressed?”
“No, I don’t think so. She just got more involved in her work—she’s a VP at Heigelmann’s—started exercising a lot, being at home less. Keeping busy, I guess, until we seemed to be living almost separate lives. It’s not as though we argued or anything. We just stopped being together.”
“Were you trying?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Well, maybe it doesn’t have to be. I mean do you still love her?”
“Ingrid, I still love her so much I can hardly get out of bed in the mornings knowing how badly I’ve screwed it all up.”
Aha, thought Ingrid. Here it comes.
“Oh? And how did you manage that?” she asked lightly, dawdling in front of the next sumptuous window display.
“I made a mistake.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be the first person to do that.”
“It was a colossal mistake.”
“How colossal?”
“I met someone.”
“Well, that’s hardly—”
“She got pregnant. I have a six-year-old daughter and to all intents and purposes a two-year-old boy in Montevedova.”
This stopped Ingrid in her tracks.
“You want to slap me, I know you do,” Daniel said. “And I deserve it, but the truth is, it couldn’t make me feel worse than I already do. It is the worst betrayal, the greatest deceit, the lowest of the low. I know all this. Trust me, I know.”
They stood there, looking at each other for a few frigid moments, then Ingrid raised her arm, but not to slap him. Instead she held a cool hand against his cheek. It burned as though she had struck it. He was perhaps the saddest man she’d ever met.
“The woman in Montevedova,” she said.
“It was nothing—a weak moment.”
“But the children make it difficult.”
He nodded. “It’s complicated, but I can’t abandon their mother, and because of that, I can’t be happy with my wife.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“I have everything that Lily wants only I have it with someone that precludes her from having anything to do with it. I’ve tossed the options up in my head a thousand times, but I still don’t know what to do.”
“What’s wrong with things the way they are?”
“Eugenia is what’s wrong with things the way they are. She’s given me an ultimatum—shape up or ship out. I’ve wanted to ship out since the very beginning, but once Francesca came along ... Eugenia has problems. She is not robust. She needs a lot of help.”
“So what are you doing here in Florence?” Ingrid asked.
Daniel had nothing left to hide.
“I’m running away,” he told her.
“Now I could slap you,” she said as the crowd rippled and flowed around them. “Running away never solved a problem for anyone, you know that. I think you know exactly what you have to do, you just need someone to agree with you.”
He thought then how lucky her three sons were to have her for a mother.
“Come on,” Ingrid said. “Let’s go get a drink and make a plan. You need to go back and sort your life out.”