Page 53 of Broken Trust

“And now?” the doctor prompts.

Gia lowers the tissue. Her face is blotchy and her mascara has run a little at the corners, and she lifts her chin anyway.

“Now I'm learning,” she says. “Slowly. Nella makes me write one thing I like about myself on a sticky note every morning and stick it on the bathroom mirror. The first week, I couldn't think of anything except my ragù.” She laughs, wet and shaky. “Yesterday I wrote that I'm brave. I remember when I fired my head chef and threw his knives out. That's something, isn't it?”

“It's a great deal,” the doctor says, and smiles.

“I have to love myself first,” Gia says, quieter now. “Whatever happens with us. Whether we make it or not. I can't keep waiting for someone else to tell me I'm worth it.”

I ache to tell her she's worth everything, that she always was. But it isn't my place to hand her that, not anymore. She has to find it for herself, and all I can do is sit here and let her.

The doctor flips to a fresh page. “Let's talk about Rosa. Gia, she's your niece, and she's also the child your husband had with your sister. That's a lot for anyone to carry. How do you feel about her?”

I hold my breath.

Gia looks down at her hands for a long time. When she answers at last, it comes out soft.

“She's beautiful,” she says. “It used to hurt just being near her. She’s got my eyes, and his smile, and she was all I'd ever prayed for, and she wasn't mine.” Gia's mouth trembles. “I hated myself for feeling that way about a baby. She hadn't done anything wrong.”

“And now?”

“Now she climbs into my lap on Sundays and makes me read the same book about a duck four times in a row.” A small smile breaks through the tears. “She calls me Zia Gia, and she holds my hand when we cross the road, and she told me last week that my cornetti is better than Nonno Bruno's. I love her so much it frightens me.” She turns, finally, and looks straight at me. “She's the best thing to come out of the worst part of my life.”

My eyes sting. I don't bother hiding it.

Dr. Bassi lets the silence sit for a moment, then closes her notebook halfway, keeping one finger on the page.

“I want to ask you both a harder question,” she says. “Not about the affair. Before that. What went wrong in your marriage? Not the moment it broke, but the cracks underneath, long before Mia.”

Gia and I trade a look across the cushion. The same answer is written on her face that's sitting in my own chest, and neither of us wants to be the first to say it out loud.

So I go first. I owe her that much.

“We got married for the wrong reasons,” I say. “At least, I did. I loved her, I swear I did, but I also wanted what came with her. The name. The family, and marrying a Rizzo was the fastest way in.” Shame burns up my neck. “I pretended it was all about her. Some of it was about getting out of my village.”

Gia nods slowly. She doesn't look angry, only tired and sad.

“I did too,” she admits. “I said yes to get out of Mama's house. To be chosen by somebody who wasn't my family. I thought being picked was the same thing as being loved.” She lets out a breath.

“So why,” Dr. Bassi asks, looking between us, “are you both sitting on this sofa today?”

I turn toward Gia properly. The light from the tall window falls across her face, and I can see every freckle and tear track, all the stubborn bits of her I took for granted for ten years.

“Because I married you for the wrong reasons,” I tell her. “And I want to stay married to you for the right one.”

Then I hold out my hand, palm up, across that empty cushion between us.

She stares at it for what feels like forever. I can hear the clock ticking above the doctor's head and my own heart slamming against my ribs. I've held my hand out to her like this before, in clinic waiting rooms and once across a kitchen counter scattered with unpaid bills, and I had no idea whether she'd take it.

Gia reaches across and slides her fingers into mine.

Her palm is warm and damp, and her grip is stronger than I expect.

“Me too,” she says.

Dr. Bassi sets her notebook on the little table beside her chair.

“Same time next week?” she says gently.