She spoke again, and this time her tone cut like glass. “All this time, I thought I was the problem. I believed I had driven you away with my political causes, with my beliefs. After the Gleno, after San Remo, I convinced myself all I had to do was be the woman you wanted. That the strain and the pressure you were under to perform for the fascisti… I withdrew and let you do what you had to.”
She took a swig of the Scotch and turned away from him. “And you were lying. Just lying. I let you lie.” She chuckled into her glass, drank once more.
Then Chiara whirled on him, her voice hoarse with pain, disgust. “This is so sick. You are so sick. You have to find them. Damn you, Angelo! She’s his half sister!”
Downstairs, the bell rang, and voices surged upwards from the stairwell. The Accosis with the Colonel and Angelo’s mother, Angelo’s sisters, their husbands, the children and all their chatter. He heard Pietro below, Chiara’s father, welcoming the guests and escorting them up the stairs.
Chiara took a deep breath, her eyes widening. “I can’t.” She stood. “You have to get rid of them.”
He rose with her, moved in front of the ottoman, but she went around the arm of the couch.
“I’m going to leave the room,” she said. “You explain to the guests why we’re cancelling. And then you had better go find our son and that…that! And, Angelo, when you’ve done that, you can send for your things.”
Chiara turned, and the colours of her dress vanished. He was left with just the black back of it, the fishtail on the floor. She went to the door. A soft click as it closed. The scent of jasmine.
So that was it.
Wearily, he stepped into the hall to make his excuses.
***
A nnamarie stood over Marco, lying on the floor. “Get up!”
She hated the way he looked, small and pathetic. She wanted to hit him. Instead, she kicked him. Not hard, at least she thought she hadn’t, but Marco flinched from the impact, coughed once, twice, and rolled over on his side. A grappa bottle rolled away from where his hand had fallen. Annamarie sighed and shoved him with her foot again. When he grumbled something, she didn’t bother to understand.
“Get up, Marco.” She winced at the sound of her own pleading. Why was she so weak? She looked at him more closely. A lock of hair had fallen haphazardly across his forehead. One leg, with its long black hairs, was propping him up, as if to keep him from falling. They were the hairs of an animal, not a human.
She scanned the rest of his body, looking for some redeeming feature, something that she could still love about him. There wasn’t a single thing. She put a hand to her cheek and felt the welt where he’d knocked her with the back of his hand. Last night, she believed it had been an accident. Last night, she understood that he was furious and it was Angelo Grimani he was lashing out at, not her.
It no longer mattered now.
Marco muttered something to the floor. The slurring, the stink, and the excessiveness shut something down in her, as if a heavy gate dropped inside her. She moved mechanically, did the things she could not otherwise do without that gate between them: at the dresser, she opened the drawers one by one, calm and deliberate. From beneath the bed, she pulled out her father’s old suitcase. The silk stockings Francesca had lent her, the slips and the high-heeled shoes, those she put back into their boxes. The only things that went into her suitcase were the few items she had not yet discarded from Arlund. There was the wooden box with her ink and paper, the photograph of her brothers and herself, the small package of her father’s tobacco she had held to her nose more than once in these past months. Her one change of clothing from home—a Dirndl—was long gone, traded in for something Italian. Even her uniform was lost to her. All she had was Chiara Grimani’s green dress and a pair of old shoes. She could not go back home, back to Arlund, like that. She couldn’t go back home at all.
The entity that had taken her over reminded Annamarie of her mother the day Annamarie had returned from the Planggers’ tree, when Angelo Grimani had beaten Marco beneath it. She remembered the clothing stacked on her parents’ bed, draped on the footboard.
Without another thought, Annamarie grabbed Marco’s discarded trousers from the floor, his shirt, and his pullover. She tucked her hair under the burgundy cap the merchant had given her. Luckily, Marco had had enough sense to grab someone’s coat from the villa before chasing after her. She had no idea whose it was, and it was oversized and too big, but it was warm. She did not look in the mirror as she left the room and the door open. Her insides went queasy at the thought of him waking up at that very moment and calling her name, and she almost missed a step.
One of the maids flitted past the bottom of the stairs with a duster in hand. Otherwise, the house was silent. Annamarie reached the front door and froze at the sound of slow, deliberate clapping above. She whirled around. It was the pinched-face Signora Grimani. She stood at the top of the stairs.
“Brava child,” the old woman applauded. “A beautiful exit.”
Say nothing. It’s better if you say nothing. She tore away from the stony glare. The front door was just before her.
“Where were you two last night? There were many people looking for you. Your father, for one. At least
