Page 43 of Broken Trust

We stop at a red light by the old fish market. The road is deserted, just the rain and the lamps and the two of us.

“You look happy,” I say carefully. “Were you out on a date?”

She snorts. “No. God, no.”

“Who were all those women, then?”

“Nurses from Nella's ward. They adopted me this spring.” A small smile tugs at her mouth. “Every few weeks we go out and drink too much wine and complain about men and dance to terrible music. Tonight was Paola's birthday. She turned forty, and she made us all sing to her twice.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It really is.” She turns from the glass and finds my reflection, and there's something steady and calm in her face that I never once saw there while we were married. “For the first time in my life, Dante, I'm doing things for me. I go dancing. I read books in the bath. I wake up on Mondays, when the restaurant's closed, and at times do nothing.” She lifts one shoulder. “I didn't know life could feel like this.”

The light turns green. I don't move.

Somebody behind me honks, and I jerk the car forward too fast and have to brake hard at the next corner. My hands are shaking on the wheel.

“Gia,” I say, and my voice comes out rough. “Could we ever be friends?”

“Never.”

“Especially, because we’re still married,” she says, softer now. “I can't sit across a table from you every so often and make small talk about the weather and pretend my heart doesn't do what it does whenever I see you. I'm not built like that.” She turns her face back to the glass. “I spent too many years turning myself into whatever everyone else needed. I refuse to spend the rest of my life as your friend when I used to be your wife.”

We turn onto Nella's street. It's narrow and quiet, the shutters closed, a single light burning in a window on the third floor. I pull up at the curb and put the car in park, and we both just sit there.

“This is me,” Gia says, and I nod.

She unbuckles her seatbelt, gathers her bag, and puts her hand on the door. Then she stops and looks at me one last time.

“You still haven't signed the divorce papers,” she says. “Ferri has called your lawyer four times, and Conti keeps stalling.”

I grip the wheel. “I know.”

“Sign them, Dante.” Her eyes are shining in the glow from the dashboard, but her voice is steady. “Please. If you ever really loved me, even a little, sign them and let me go.”

Then she climbs out into the rain. I see her run up to Nella's building with her cardigan pulled over her head, fumble with her keys, and vanish behind the heavy wooden door.

She doesn't look back.

I realize that she lied to me. She doesn’t owe me an explanation, she must have been on a date. If she was out with Nella’s friends then Nella would be with her.

I should let her go, find happiness with someone who would treat her right. But when it comes to Gia, that selfish bastard in me who broke her heart refuses to let go.

My phone lights up with another fare, some kid across town who wants a ride home from a club. I stare at it until the screen goes dark. Then I switch off the app, put my head down on the steering wheel, and sit there in the rain outside Nella's building for a very long time.

24

GIA

The driver's name is Lucia, and she has a picture of her grandchildren taped to the dashboard and a rosary swinging from the mirror, and I'm so disappointed I could cry.

I don't, of course. I smile and say buonasera and climb into the back of her little blue Fiat with my bag of cheese samples on my lap, and I listen to her chatter about her daughter-in-law all the way across the city. I make the proper noises at the right moments. I even laugh once. But for the entire ride I'm looking out the window at the lights sliding past, thinking about a silver Toyota with a cracked cupholder, and a pair of dark eyes in a rearview mirror, and the way he said my name like it hurt.

It's been a year since he drove me to Nella’s, almost to the day.

Also, I lied to him that night. I was on a date, after I went out with Paola to celebrate her birthday. I told my date I needed the bathroom, then hid in there calling an Uber. He just kept going on about how much money he had and how he liked big girls. Big fat girls, as if that was an open invitation to sleep with him.

Lucia drops me outside Nella's building a little after ten. I thank her, give her five stars, and stand on the sidewalk for a moment in the warm September rain, looking up at her lit window and feeling like the biggest fool in Italy.