There was a movement behind Marco, and Angelo looked at his wife. “Chiara. Gina and I—”
“Gina?” Chiara cocked her head. “Gina and you,” she repeated, softer.
Angelo shook his head and shook a finger at Marco. “What you saw was nothing. If you hadn’t run away—”
“I saw how you looked at her! How you were holding her! There’s nothing you can say to defend yourself. Nothing. Filipa will have nothing to do with me—”
Something shattered. A champagne glass, its contents spilling across the parquet. Annamarie stared at Marco, her bottom lip trembling.
“That’s why,” the girl said hoarsely. “That’s the reason you brought me here tonight? So that you could… Filipa?” Her eyes widened. “I mean nothing to you, do I?”
The glare in Marco’s eyes dimmed, and his shoulders sagged. The girl was silently begging him, but he said nothing. She pushed past them all—the dress just a touch too long—and she stumbled through the parlour door. When Marco made to go after her, Angelo reached for his arm, but his son dodged the attempt.
“Marco, stop,” Angelo demanded. “That girl, she’s not what you think!”
“You stop!” Chiara grabbed and shook him. “You stop, Angelo.”
He wrenched himself from her hold.
“Is Marco telling the truth?” she demanded. “God, Angelo! I deserve that much. The truth!”
The front door slammed shut below. Once. Twice.
“Now,” Angelo growled, “is not the time. This is not about you.”
“If it’s not about me,” she said, softly this time, “then who?” She looked up. “Is it true?”
He shook his head.
Chiara covered her ears. “Don’t!” She stared at the floor as if it might open and offer her an escape.
He left her like that, rushing out into the hallway and down the stairs. But when he got to the street, it was empty. It would be futile to go after his son and that girl. He returned to face his wife, but when he came back into the parlour, Chiara’s black sequinned gown—splashes of red, orange, and purple flaring up from the hem—was the only thing that lived in that room. The woman in it was no longer there.
Heavily, she dropped her hands from her head and glanced at him as if to say she was ready to hear his answer now.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s true. Signora Conti—”
“In San Remo?”
“No. Before.”
“Were there others?” she asked the floor.
Then she did not know who Annamarie truly was.
“Yes, Chiara. One other.”
There was no reason to hide anything. All he had done to protect Marco and her from this one fact—that he shared a daughter with Katharina Steinhauser—had been for nought. His chest hurt.
“I need a drink.” She went to the sideboard, took out a bottle of Scotch—Chiara never drank Scotch; none of them did—and waved it in the air.
He nodded. She removed two glasses and poured two knuckles in each. She returned with the glasses, stretching one out to him.
“Her name was Katharina,” he said and accepted the drink. The Scotch burned, felt good. “I was attacked in the Reschen Valley, Chiara. There was no accident.”
“Attacked? What are you talking about?”
Why had he started there? He no longer needed to justify himself. Not after all this time. Not under these circumstances. He waved the glass in front of his face. “Forget it, Chiara. It’s a long story. All you need to know is that was my first lie to all of you.”
“But why, Angelo? Why lie about something as serious as that? An attack? Who attacked you?”
He sighed. “Because if I’d told you or my father—your father—everyone would have insisted on calling an investigation, a manhunt for a Tyrolean criminal, and then I’d have to go back up there, or someone we know would go up there and find out what I did after Katharina had found me.”
Chiara crossed her arms, the hand with the Scotch glass lifted and pressed against her left breast. “And what did you do, Angelo?”
“She came to me one night. I had a fever. A nightmare, that nightmare I’ve told you about—”
“Some truth to your story after all?”
“Please, I’m trying to explain.”
Chiara drifted to the sofa and slumped onto it. He went to the settee opposite and rested his drink on the glass top of the table between them.
“I was feverish. She came to me. I am not going to say that we took advantage of one another. She was so… I don’t know. Sad. Alone. She’d been nursing me for some time, and I suppose I wanted to—”
“Make her feel better then?”
He sighed, impatient. “Maybe. Or maybe there was some connection. Something simply human. Damn it, Chiara. I’m not the first man to have fallen or felt attracted to someone they’re grateful to, owe their life to.”
“No, no. Of course not. How silly of me. Thank you so much for explaining that very natural phenomenon to me. That makes it all better, Angelo.”
He downed the Scotch.
“So, that girl…” Chiara was holding herself as if she were freezing.
“Annamarie.”
“She’s your daughter.”
He nodded, and she drew into herself.
“All this time, you’ve known about her?” she asked.
“No. I wasn’t sure. I mean, she never told me, the mother that is, until just recently, when Annamarie ran off to come here to Bolzano.” He was too weary to backtrack, to go over the story. What difference would it make?
“What have you done, Angelo?” she pleaded. “Marco is with her.”
“I thought that if I could keep things under control, nobody had to know.”
“And no one would ever find out about the affair with Signora Conti,” she scoffed.
“I was very much responsible for that affair,” he said. “That was my doing alone.”
“All betrayals were yours alone. All of them.”
