She puts her arms around my neck. I kick the car door closed and carry her to the house, over the threshold, and into the new life I will create for her.
CHAPTER 10
SARAH
Dario isn’t next to me, but I sleep deeply without him until the sun shines on my face as if its only job is to wake me.
The bathroom connected to the bedroom is done in white stone with blue glass tiles at the edges. Everything I need to take care of my business has been laid on the marble sink. I find a robe on a hook behind the door and put it on over my underwear. When he laid me down last night, I thought he’d make love to me again, but I fell into such a deep sleep, I didn’t even feel him undress me.
The bedroom’s back window opens onto acres of spindly trees on a bed of dried leaves. I can’t see the edge of the property from here. There’s no wall or break in the forest. The next house over has a peaked roof of gray shingles. The next house out the side window is closer, but still a bit of a walk through the woods. I close my eyes to hear the birds and bugs. The breeze. And far away, the whoosh of cars on a highway. Downstairs, pots and pans clack together.
Maybe Dario’s the one making a racket, but those are kitchen noises, and that man does not know his way around a kitchen.
The short hallway leads to a three-step stair with a door at the end. I try to open it, but it’s locked, and an alarm squeals so loudly and so suddenly, my heart stops, afraid to take another beat.
I’ve heard this exact pitch before, and that’s why I’m frozen in place.
Precious Blood’s alarms make the same sound, and for a moment, I was pulled out of this house and into my past.
“Hold on!” Dario’s voice could be right here or across the ocean. I can’t tell with that blaring siren.
Then it’s gone, and all that’s left of it is a ringing in my ear. I go up the three steps to find him coming down the hall toward me. The shock of the alarm has reset my mind, and it’s as if I’ve never seen him before. He seems taller, more purposeful. He is a god of terrible beauty descending from heaven on a beam of light.
He’s frightening, but I’m not scared of him, because he’s stretching down from the sky for me, only me. His hand opens, reaching down, and he’s not taller. I am two steps down. The beam of light comes from the window behind him, and his terrible beauty is just Dario Lucari in jeans and a sweater.
“Come on,” he says when I take his hand. “The eggs are going to burn.”
He takes me around a corner to a wide set of stairs that reach the first floor. With the sun up, I can see the shiny dark wood floors and pale leather couch. The white walls and matte black molding around the windows. He pulls me through so fast I have no time to gather another detail before we’re in what I can only assume is the kitchen. The walls are flat slate with hair-thin seams creating different-sized outlines.
“I hope you like eggs.” Dario pushes yellow liquid around a pan with a wooden spoon.
“I do.” I reach for the spoon. “I can do it.”
“So can I.” He takes my hand and kisses it. “Coffee’s in the pot.”
“I don’t drink coffee.”
“Right.” There’s no apology in his words, but his face has a thin, barely perceptible veil of shame over it.
“I didn’t expect you to know that, necessarily,” I say.
“I should.” He touches the corner where two seams meet and a drawer of potholders pops open. “You’re my wife.”
“Am I?” I guess where the plates are and push the corner where two seams in the wall meet. A door pops open, revealing a cabinet full of dishes. Got it on the first try.
“As far as I’m concerned, you are. Which makes me your husband, and it’s a husband’s job to know what his wife likes.”
The way he looks at me sends blood to my cheeks. He’s talking about more than breakfast.
“My friend Denise has been married since she was seventeen.” I put two plates on the counter—next to a stick of butter—and stand close to him. “It wasn’t until last year—her fourth baby, when she was laid up in the hospital—that her husband found out her slippers didn’t match.”
“Did he buy her a new pair?”
“It wouldn’t have helped.” The toast pops. I grab it with bare fingers. “It was the sizes that were different. One of her feet is bigger than the other. She has to buy two pairs of shoes, which she doesn’t do often because it’s expensive, and she has to hide the boxes with the odd ones.”
Dario pushes the eggs around, mouth tight enough to hold back a tirade. I find the butter knives before he has a chance to tell me where they are. This kitchen may want to hide its function, but it was set up sensibly.
“He should have noticed the first time he kissed her feet.” He taps the spoon on the edge of the pan and clicks off the heat.
“Marco isn’t much of a foot-kisser.” I scratch the soft butter onto the toast and drop my voice as if sharing a secret. “He’s more of an ass-kisser.”
“You don’t have to whisper here.”
“Everyone says yes to Daddy.” I shrug, turning my volume up by half a notch. “But Massimo said Marco was a super-brown-nose, so if Denise needed anything, I’d tell my brother and he’d tell Daddy to make him do it. If it came that way, it was… safer. For Denise. But it had to be done carefully.”
He scrapes eggs on one plate, then holds the pan over the other. “On top of the toast or on the side?”
“Side.”
“So, Denise couldn’t ask Marco for anything.”
“Well…” I drift off, staring into the middle distance. We weren’t supposed to ask for help from our husbands unless we were at our wit’s end. Men had their own problems. “Grandma always said it was our job to make a man’s home as stable and uncomplicated as possible. Asking for something outside the necessities of the house means we’re falling short.”
“Sit,” Dario says, pulling out a chair for me. While I was thinking about the rules I’d grown up with, he’d set the plates down with forks and glasses of water. My job.
I obey with a sigh, sitting while he pushes in the chair.
“You are first,” he says with a light touch on my neck. I turn to look up at him. He holds up a finger. “Prima. First. You can ask me for anything. Do you understand?”
He towers over me, offering to put himself at my service.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He gets in his seat and picks up his fork. That’s when I can start eating.
“How long are we staying here?”
“Until it’s safe to leave or dangerous to stay.” He brushes crumbs from his fingertips. “Today, first thing. You need to unpack whatever you have in that suitcase. Make a list of anything you’re missing… no. Anything you want. Anything. Got it?”
“Mm-hm.” I agree around eggs that are smoother and richer than any I’ve ever made myself.
“Then I’ll show you the house. Get you coded and printed. But until then, don’t open any doors.”
“What about food? Do we have enough Quick Lick?”