The Jealousy Game Over, Marriage Over: The Donna Who Walked Away novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Dust Sheets

Marisa and Pina air out the Vomero apartment while Ilaria posts photos of the villa; Gaetano calls about held containers and Marisa refuses, and Pina's cousin shows her the casino pool.

Pina came up the stairs at seven with two coffees and a paper bag of warm sfogliatelle.

She stopped in the doorway and looked at the dust sheets, the cardboard box and me on the floor in yesterday's dress.

"Did you sleep?"

"On the sofa."

"That's a pile of curtains, Mari."

"It's a comfortable pile."

Pina put the coffees down on the windowsill and pushed up her sleeves.

She had known me since we were eight, and she never asked questions she could answer with a bucket.

We took the sheets off the furniture together.

Dust came off in grey sheets and settled again on everything we had just wiped.

She ran the bakery on the ground floor of this building, so every few minutes she went down to hand out bread and came back up with a new opinion about my husband.

By nine the kitchen smelled of lemon soap.

My phone buzzed on the counter.

It was Ilaria's account. She had posted a photograph of the villa pool in the morning light.

Learning a Donna's schedule, she had written. Seven days, no pressure!

Under it, Tommaso's friends had left forty comments.

One of them said: Long live the new Donna! Sorry, Boss, we only just learned the old one's name.

Pina took the phone out of my hand, looked at it, and put it face down in the flour tin.

"Not before ten," she said. "Doctor's orders."

"You're not a doctor."

"I own a lot of yeast."

The phone rang inside the tin.

I fished it out and wiped it on my dress.

It was Gaetano Iovine, the harbour master of Naples.

"Donna Marisa."

"Good morning, Gaetano."

"Three Sarnelli containers are sitting on my quay," he said in his dry, even voice. "Cement and machine parts. The release form has a new signature on it, Ilaria Fusco, with the title Donna."

"I see."

"I can't accept it. I called your husband. He laughed and told me to ask you."

I looked at the lemon soap, the bucket and Pina, who was pretending to count rolls.

"I'm not at the desk this week," I said.

"Understood."

He did not ask why, and I was grateful for that.

"I'll hold the containers until Friday," he said. "After that the shipping line charges the family four thousand euros a day."

"That's generous."

"It's procedure." He paused. "Are you all right?"

"I'm cleaning."

"Then I'll let you clean."

The line went quiet, and I stood there holding the phone a moment longer than I needed to.

At noon Pina's cousin came up the stairs.

She dealt cards at the Sarnellis' private casino, and she had her shift apron still on under her coat.

"I shouldn't be showing you this," she said, and held out her phone.

It was a photograph of the whiteboard behind the cage in the casino's back room.

Sixty-one names ran down the left side. Beside each one was a bet.

At the top of the board, in Tommaso's heavy handwriting, it said: Total pool 740,000.

The odds were chalked in a column.

Back by Tuesday, three to one.

Back by Sunday, five to one.

Back by her own choice, never, forty to one.

Next to "never" the column was empty.

"Nobody bets on never," Pina's cousin said. "They think it's a joke."

"Who collects?"

"Whoever's right at midnight on day seven. The cage pays in cash, same night."

Pina stopped counting rolls.

I looked at the whiteboard for a long time.

"Who's allowed to place a bet?" I asked.

"Anyone on the family list."

"Am I still on it?"

She scrolled down the picture, tapped, and turned the phone toward me.

My name was there, spelled out in full: Marisa Sarnelli.

"Nobody took you off," she said quietly. "I think they think it's funnier."

My husband had left me on the list so that I could bet against myself.

I picked up a dry cloth and started wiping down the window frame again.

"Mari," Pina said.

"I'm thinking."

"You're scrubbing a window that's already clean."

"It's how I think."

She took a sfogliatella out of the bag, tore it in half, and gave me the bigger piece.

"Whatever you're planning," she said, "tell me before you do it, so I can say I told you not to."

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