Page 42 of Broken Trust

“Hi, sorry, I'm going to San Vitale, it should be on the…”

She meets my eyes in the rearview mirror, and her voice dies.

Neither of us moves. Outside, one of her friends bangs on the window and blows her a kiss, and Gia lifts a hand to wave back without looking away from me.

“Dante,” she says finally, like the name has been knocked out of her.

“Hi, Gia.” I try to keep my voice level and don't quite manage it.

“You're driving an Uber?” Her eyes flick from the cracked cupholder to the pine-tree air freshener and back to my face.

“Every weekend since July.” I try for a smile and don't quite manage it. “Do you want me to cancel? I can call you another car. It won't take five minutes.”

She's considering it. Her hand hovers over the door handle, and I brace myself for the click of it opening.

Instead she sits back and fastens her seatbelt.

“Just go,” she says quietly.

So I pull away from the curb.

The streets are slick with rain from earlier, and the traffic lights stretch in long red and green streaks across the wet cobblestones. For several blocks the car is dead silent. I keep my hands at ten and two like I'm taking my driving test, and I try not to steal glances at her, and I fail.

She's wearing a black dress with a little knit cardigan over it, and her hair is loose around her shoulders the way she wore it when we were kids, before her mother told her it looked messy. There's a silver bracelet on her wrist I don't recognize. The bruise is long gone. She looks rested, and happy, and so beautiful that it physically hurts to sit this close to her and not be allowed to say so.

“How's Rosa?” she asks, breaking the silence.

“She's walking now. Well, sort of. More like falling forward and hoping her feet catch up.” I glance up at her reflection. “She's got about three words, and one of them is no.”

That surprises a laugh out of her, soft and real. “Sounds like a Rizzo.”

“That's what Pa says.”

Gia frowns. “I thought your father threw you out.”

So, she must have been checking up on me. How did she know that piece of information? Ma. She really has a big mouth.

“Ma can look after Rosa while I work. Better than where we were living.” I turn onto the river road, where the old stone bridges arch over the black water. “We've been there since summer. I'm in my old bedroom with the soccer posters still on the wall, Rosa's crib is squeezed in next to my bed, and Pa grunts at me over breakfast. Ma babysits when I'm out on the road.” I shrug. “It's annoying as hell. I'm a grown man, and Ma still tells me to wear a scarf. But Rosa has her grandparents now, and a real home, and somebody who loves her waiting in the next room whenever she wakes up. I'd put up with a lot more than Pa's grunting for that.”

Gia goes quiet. When I risk a look back, she's staring out at the river, and her jaw is tight.

“I wish you'd felt that way about our marriage,” she says.

She doesn't raise her voice, and there's no anger in it. It's just true, and that's what makes it hurt.

“So do I,” I tell her. “Every day, Gia. I'm so sorry.”

She doesn't answer. She just keeps watching the water while the wipers squeak back and forth across the glass.

“You know what I still see when I close my eyes?” she says eventually, so quietly I almost miss it under the rain. “You at the baby shower, with your hand on her stomach, smiling for that photographer like it was the happiest day of your life.”

My grip tightens on the wheel. “I wasn't smiling, Gia. I was a coward trying to make myself out to be the innocent one in this mess.”

She twists in her seat to look at me properly. “That's not how it looked from where I was standing.”

“I believe you.” I swallow hard. “Nothing about that day looked the way it felt.”

Neither of us speaks for a while. Then she lets out a long, unsteady breath and turns back to the river, and I can't tell whether I've made things better or worse.