The Don's Wife Stopped Asking novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Garden Door

Remo unlocks the garden door at dawn, Orsola is kind over coffee, and Tancredi catches Sabina outside; a near-kiss breaks on her mocking line and she sets her terms.

The key turned in my door at ten to six in the morning.

I was already awake, sitting on the bed in last night's dress.

Remo opened the door six inches and did not come in.

"He told me to lock it," he said, low. "He didn't say anything about the garden."

"Remo."

"I locked your door at midnight, the way he said." He put the key on the hall table, where I could see it. "That's all I did."

He went down the back stairs.

I waited a moment, took the key, and walked out of my own room.

The kitchen was dark.

The garden door was open an inch.

The grass on the Todt Hill estate is wet until nine, and it soaked through my stockings before I reached the fountain.

I sat on the stone rim, and I stopped holding my shoulders up.

Behind me a cup clinked on a saucer.

"You'll catch your death," Orsola said.

She stood in a silk robe with two coffees on a tray and her hair tied up in a scarf.

She sat beside me on the wet stone in her silk robe.

"Drink. It's the good kind, I stole it from Papa's cabinet."

"Thank you."

"I heard what happened at lunch. Everyone did." She tucked my hair behind my ear. "Sabina, I was so proud of you."

I laughed once.

"Tanc is being impossible," Orsola said. "He's been like this since his father died. He thinks if he holds everything tight, nothing will break."

"He locked my door."

"I know." She said it softly. "Is it still locked?"

"Remo let me out."

"Good for Remo." She squeezed my knee. "Listen to me. Papa is looking into Emilio's file himself. He said so last night. He wants you to stay calm and let him work."

"Your father said that?"

"He said, tell her to stop running around town and let the grown men handle it." She smiled. "That's Papa for 'I care.' Don't push Tanc this week. Please."

I held the warm cup in both hands.

It was the first time anyone in that house had been kind to me before breakfast.

"I won't," I lied, and she kissed my cheek and went in.

I stayed on the fountain until the light came up over the wall.

When the study window on the second floor opened, I did not look up.

Tancredi came out of the kitchen door in shirtsleeves with his hair still wet.

He crossed the lawn fast.

"Who unlocked you?"

"The door was open."

"Which door?"

"I'm not going to tell you that."

He stopped in front of me.

I stood, because I did not want to look up at him from a stone ledge.

We were close enough that I could see the scar through his left eyebrow.

"I told you where to be," he said.

"You told me you wanted to know where I was. Now you know. I'm in the garden."

"Sabina."

"I'm going to the county building on Tuesday. Visiting is six to eight. I'm telling you where I'll be."

He took my wrist.

His grip was hard, and his thumb sat right on my pulse.

"You'll go when I decide," he said.

"I'm not asking you."

"I know you're not."

His voice dropped, and he leaned in.

I could feel his breath on my mouth.

My pulse beat against his thumb, hard, and he felt it.

I felt his pulse too, in the hand that held me, going as fast as mine.

I told myself it was anger.

His eyes dropped to my lips and came back up.

Nothing in his face moved.

I should have stepped away, and I should have spat in his eye.

"Is this where I ask?" I said.

His grip went loose.

It was a small thing, one finger lifting from my wrist, but I saw it.

He let go.

I had embarrassed him in his own garden, and we both knew it.

He stepped back, and he put his hands in his pockets.

"Say what you want," he said, flat.

"I tell you where I'm going. I don't ask."

"And if I say no?"

"Then you've said it. And I go."

His jaw worked.

"No one follows me," I said. "Remo can drive me. He can't follow me."

"Anything else?"

"No lying. Not to me."

For the first time in three years something moved in his face that I could not read.

"Both ways," he said.

"Both ways."

"Fine."

I had not expected fine.

I had expected the lock again, and Remo, and something worse.

He turned toward the house.

At the kitchen door he stopped, with his back to me.

"Tuesday," he said. "I'll take you myself."

I stood alone in the wet grass.

In three years my husband had never offered me anything, and I had no idea what he would want for it.

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