Page 280 of Mario

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“She told you to go.”

I stare at him.

He gives a slight shrug, but his face is strained. “I heard her.”

Of course he did.

Always listening.

Always quiet with a book in his hand, hearing more than anyone knew.

“She told you she was tired of you staring at her as if she might break,” Matteo says. “She told you to go be impossible somewhere else for two hours.”

A sound leaves me. Not a laugh so much as a pained sound.

That was Anna.

Exactly Anna.

She had been irritated with me that evening. Beautiful and rounder than she had been the week before, one hand braced at the base of her back, glaring at me because I asked if she wanted to sit down for the fourth time in ten minutes.

Go, Mario. Go frighten someone who is not carrying your child. I am tired of your face.

I went.

I went because she was smiling when she said it.

I went because the doctor had been there that morning and said everything looked stable.

I went because I believed I would come home to her annoyed with me, not gone from me.

“She was alive when I left,” I say.

Neither of them answers.

“She was alive,” I repeat, though I do not know which of them I am telling. “She was irritated. She was tired. She wanted lemon ice. I told her I would bring it home.”

Tomasso closes his eyes.

Matteo’s hand tightens around the stem of his wineglass.

“The housekeeper found her,” I say.

The words come slowly now.

Not because I do not remember.

Because I will never forget.

“She called for help. Then me. By the time I arrived, the paramedics were already there.”

I look at the table, but I do not see it.

I see marble.

Blood.

Anna’s hand limp against the floor.

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