My Don Husband Wants Two Wives novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Hem

I put the roses in the sink and the card in my apron pocket.

I kept seeing Rocco's face when I said "since the wedding."

He had done the sum faster than I had, and he hadn't liked the answer.

By Tuesday I had stopped pretending the card was a customer's.

Paola came to the shop that day at closing time, and she brought a box of pastries.

I was at the cutting table with a gray wool coat spread under the lamp.

I didn't look up.

"Livia," she said.

"We're closed."

"I know."

She set the box on the counter and stayed standing by the door, a tall woman in black with her hands clasped in front of her.

"I knew for six weeks," Paola said. "I want you to hear me say that before you hear it from anyone else."

I put down my chalk.

"Six weeks."

"Since the third of September. Rocco told me in the garden. I told him he had to tell you the same night, and he said he would handle it." Her voice shook. "I let him handle it. I sat across from you at four Sundays of dinner and I let him."

"You cut my hair at your kitchen table in September."

"I know."

"You asked if I was sleeping."

"I know, Livia."

"Why?"

She came across the shop then, and sat on the fitting stool Rocco had sat on, and for a second I wanted to throw the pastries at her.

"Because of our father," she said.

I waited.

"Everyone says he had a heart attack. He didn't. Two years before you married Rocco, he told Aldo Corsetti he wouldn't sign the dock contracts over. He was dead in a month. Rocco was thirty and he took the chair, and the first thing he did was sign them over to keep the rest of us alive."

I had heard the story of the heart attack at my own wedding.

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