The Ex-Wife He Lost Forever novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Guest Room

At Ettore's house Cecilia sets her terms of thirty days and no touching, and Zia tells her Simona is telling the parish she was drunk.

Ettore lived in a stone house on Pine Street with iron bars on the ground-floor windows and no doorbell.

The front door opened before they reached it.

A short woman in a black cardigan stood in the hall, with flour up to both elbows.

"So this is the one," she said.

"Zia," Ettore said. "This is Cecilia."

"I know who she is. I was at her wedding."

Zia Concetta took Cecilia's face in both floury hands and looked at the cut on her forehead.

"Santa Maria. Look at you. Who let you leave the hospital with that?"

"I let myself out," Cecilia said.

"Good girl." Zia let go. "Come. You're thin as a candle, and I made too much."

"I can't eat."

"Nobody asked if you could. I asked if you will."

Cecilia followed her into a yellow kitchen that smelled of garlic and baked bread.

Within ten minutes she had a bowl of soup in front of her, a hot-water bottle behind her back and a stranger's wool socks on her feet.

She ate three spoonfuls and cried into the fourth.

Zia put a dishtowel in her hand and said nothing at all.

It was the kindest thing anyone had done for her in three years.

Ettore stood in the doorway until she had finished, then said, "My study, when you're ready."

His study was a dark room with a desk, a window onto the garden, and no photographs.

He didn't sit.

"You can stay in the guest room as long as you need," he said.

"Thirty days," Cecilia said.

He waited.

"I'll stay thirty days, until I find work and a room. I owe you nothing for it. I take nothing from you that I don't pay back. And you don't touch me."

She heard how that sounded and kept her chin up anyway.

"I'm not afraid of you. I just won't be anyone's again."

Something moved in Ettore's face and was gone.

"Agreed," he said. "All of it. I'll add one condition."

"What?"

"You eat at my table. Three meals a day."

"Why?"

"Because my aunt will not forgive either of us if you don't."

It almost made her smile, and she hated that it nearly did.

"I'll ask you something," she said.

"Ask."

"The nurse told me the hospital bill was paid before my ambulance arrived. A man from the family called ahead."

Ettore looked at the garden.

"I want to know which man."

"The family looks after its own."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I have." He turned back to her. "You need sleep. Your room is the second door on the left."

He walked her up himself and stopped outside the door.

Inside was a high white bed, a lamp, and a window onto a pear tree.

On the nightstand somebody had set a glass of water and a rosary.

"The rosary is my aunt's," he said. "She puts one in every room. You don't have to touch it."

"Thank you."

"Cecilia."

She turned.

"I'm sorry about the child."

It was said very quietly.

"Thank you," she said again, and shut the door.

She slept for nine hours without dreaming.

When she woke it was dark, and Zia was knocking.

"Supper."

"I'm not hungry."

"Table. That's the rule in this house, and Ettore wrote it down this morning in his own handwriting. I watched him."

She came downstairs in borrowed socks.

The dining room held a long walnut table and three places.

Ettore sat at the head with a folded newspaper.

He stood when she came in, and he stayed standing until she sat.

Zia set down a dish of roasted chicken and a bowl of potatoes the size of walnuts, then lowered herself into a chair with a grunt.

"Eat. Both of you. Nobody talks until the chicken's gone."

They ate.

The chicken was good, and the silence was not terrible.

Ettore ate neatly and said nothing, and every time Cecilia looked up he was looking at his plate.

Zia waited exactly until the chicken was gone.

Then she folded her napkin.

"Cecilia. You should hear something from me before you hear it from the street."

Ettore put his fork down.

"Zia."

"No, she should know." Zia's black eyes were steady. "I had my sewing circle in the kitchen at noon. Four women from the parish. Every one of them has heard it already."

"Heard what?" Cecilia said.

Zia looked at her for a long moment.

"Simona has been to see her priest. She cried. She told him she was sick over what happened, and that she'd smelled drink on you at the family dinner on Sunday."

Cecilia went cold from her scalp to her feet.

"I don't drink."

"I know."

"I had one glass of wine at my wedding and a sip of champagne at Christmas."

"I know, child. I'm telling you what's being said."

"What's being said?"

Zia's mouth went flat.

"That you were drinking. That you crashed on the bridge on your own, and that's why the baby died."

Nobody moved.

The pear tree tapped at the window.

"The parish has it by tonight," Zia said. "And Sunday is Mass for the dead brother, with the whole family in the front pews."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend