Page 46 of Broken Trust

“And the next night as well. I was going to cook for you.” He shrugs, casual, wiping down the steel. “You see Nella constantly, Gia. She's always in your business. Don't you think you're a little too dependent on her?”

I laugh, because surely he's joking. “She's my sister.”

“I know. I'm just saying.” He kisses my temple. “You've got me now.”

I go home and lie awake for an hour, turning that sentence over and over in the dark, unable to decide whether it sounded romantic or like a door being locked.

On Friday afternoon, my phone buzzes while I'm getting ready.

Wear the green dress. The black one's too much for that place.

I'm at the wardrobe in my slip with the black dress over my arm. I bought it last spring on a whim and it's still unworn, because until now I had nowhere to go. It has a low back and a slit up one side, and when I tried it on in the shop I felt, for the first time in years, like a woman somebody might want.

I have no idea how he even knows I own a green one.

I don't move. Then I hang the black silk back up and reach for the green, since it's our first evening out and not worth a fight, and because some old, well-trained part of me still reaches for the easy thing.

He picks me up at seven in a borrowed Alfa Romeo, handsome in a crisp shirt open at the collar, and his eyes go straight to my dress.

“Perfect,” he says, like I've passed a test.

The restaurant on the lake is beautiful. There are candles on every table, starched linen, a terrace hanging over the dark water with lights strung along the railing, and a waiter in a white jacket who pulls out my chair. Across the water the hills are shadowed, dotted with the lamps of little villages, and the air smells of pine and woodsmoke. It should be the most romantic night of my life.

I pick up the wine list, and Matteo gently takes it out of my hands.

“Let me,” he says. “I know this place.”

He chooses a white from Campania without consulting me. Then, when the waiter turns to take my order, Matteo answers for me. The branzino, grilled, no sauce, a green salad on the side.

I open my mouth. I'd had my eye on the pappardelle with wild boar ragù since we sat down, the way you look at an old friend across a room.

“You taste rich food all day,” Matteo says, smiling, closing the menu. “You'll feel better with something light. Trust me.”

The waiter glances at me. I could speak up. I'm a grown woman who owns her own restaurant, and I'm more than capable of ordering my own dinner.

“The sea bass is fine,” I hear myself say.

It arrives perfectly cooked and forgettable, and I push it around my plate while Matteo talks. He's always been funny, and he tells a story about a fire in his old kitchen in Naples that has the couple at the next table laughing along. But when I start to tell him about the pecorino I found in Borgo San Pietro, he talks right over me, correcting me on the aging process, and by the end of it, putting it on the menu has become his idea.

When the bread arrives, I take a piece. His palm covers my fingers on the linen, warm and heavy.

“You've already had one,” he says softly, like he's doing me a kindness.

I pull away and tuck my hands beneath the table. My face is burning, and I can't tell if it's embarrassment or something closer to rage.

Halfway through dessert, which he also ordered, my phone lights up on the table. It's a photo from Nella: Garibaldi asleep in a paint tray with a stripe of blue across his tail, and underneath, This is your fault for abandoning me. I snort with laughter and start to type back.

Matteo picks up my phone, flips it over, and slides it across to his side.

“We're on a date, Gia,” he says. “No phones. Your sister can survive one night without you.”

“I was just…”

“I know.” He squeezes my wrist. His thumb presses into the bone a little harder than it needs to. “Tonight's about us.”

He smiles at me across the candle. And for one strange, cold second, sitting on that beautiful terrace in my safe green dress, I'm not there at all.

I'm eighteen, at the long table in Mamma's dining room, and she's sliding the bread out of my reach while the aunts nod along. A second helping, Gianna? You'll never fit into your wedding dress. I'm twenty-four, at Pa's office, and he's shutting my laptop in the middle of a sentence because the numbers are his job and I only need to type them. I'm every girl I've ever been, sitting very still and very small so the person across from me stays happy.