My Husband and My Best Friend Betrayed Me on Our Wedding Day. Twice. novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Soup

In her mother's kitchen Valeria records Bianca's tearful excuse that Stefano forced her, pretends to believe it, and then sees Stefano's text on Bianca's phone: Did she buy it?

Luca parked at the end of my mother's street and turned off the engine.

"I'll wait here," he said.

"You'll leave. If my mother sees your car, she'll come out with the rolling pin."

"Then I'll wait around the corner."

I got out. I did not thank him.

The porch light was on, and the screen door was unlatched.

Rosa was in the kitchen in her church dress with an apron tied over it.

She had a pot of pastina on the stove, because that is what my mother makes for every disaster.

"Sit," she said. "Take that thing off."

"It has forty buttons, Mama."

"Then turn around."

I stood at the counter in Luca's sweatshirt while she undid the buttons down my back one at a time.

Her fingers shook. She was crying and trying to hide it from the back of my neck.

"Four hundred dollars for the alterations," she said. "Four hundred dollars for that man's brother."

"Half-brother."

"Don't correct me today."

The dress slid down to the floor. I stepped out of it in my slip and a man's sweatshirt.

She put a bowl in front of me with butter melting on top.

"Eat."

I ate.

It was the first warm thing I had held all day.

"Mama, the money is gone," I said. "Papa's money. Stefano moved it to his father's company while he was telling me about Bianca."

Her spoon stopped.

"All of it?"

"All of it."

She said a word in Italian that my grandmother would have slapped her for.

Then she said, "We'll get it back. We have a lawyer."

"We have your friend's nephew who does parking tickets."

"He does closings too."

I laughed, and then I was crying into the pastina, and she put her cheek on top of my head.

"That Luca was in the church," she said, into my hair. "I saw him. Standing at the back of my wedding."

"He drove me here."

Her whole body went still.

"He did what?"

"He's waiting around the corner. Mama, did he ever write to me? After?"

She let go of me and turned to the stove.

"That man wouldn't dare," she said.

She stirred the pot, though there was nothing left in it to stir.

The doorbell rang.

My mother looked at the clock and then at me. "That will be the soup."

"What soup?"

"Bianca said she was bringing soup. She called an hour ago, crying so hard I couldn't understand her."

"Mama."

"She was at the hospital with us," my mother said. "She sat in that waiting room for two days. I couldn't just tell her no."

The bell rang again.

I thought about the car, and the seat, and the perfume in my veil.

I took out my phone, opened the voice recorder and pressed the red button.

Then I put it face down on the counter, beside the bread.

"Let her in," I said.

Bianca came through the door with a covered pot in both arms and her mascara down to her chin.

She had changed out of her bridesmaid dress into a grey sweater.

She set the pot down and went to her knees on the kitchen tile in front of me.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't know how to say it."

"Try," I said.

"He was drunk at the rehearsal dinner and he kept saying things. He said he'd pull my accounts. He said every venue in the city worked with his family and I'd never plan another wedding."

Her voice broke.

"And then last night he showed up at my door, and I was scared, Val. I was so scared of him."

She put her face in her hands.

I looked at the top of her head. The part in her hair was crooked, the way it had been in the sixth grade.

"He said he'd marry you whether I helped or not," she said. "I thought if I was close, I could keep you safe."

"Safe," I said.

"I know how it sounds."

"You planned my honeymoon, Bianca."

"I'll cancel it. I'll cancel everything. I'll go to Aldo myself and tell him what Stefano did."

My mother stood by the stove with her arms folded.

She looked at me. She was waiting for me to say what she should feel.

I sat back on the stool.

"Okay," I said.

Bianca lifted her head. "Okay?"

"I'm tired. I don't want to fight you in my mother's kitchen. Come to lunch on Monday and tell me everything. All of it."

"You'd do that?"

"You were with me for two days in that waiting room."

She grabbed my hands and kissed my knuckles, crying.

Her phone lay on the table beside the bread. It buzzed against the wood, and the screen lit up.

I saw it upside down over her shoulder.

Stefano: "Did she buy it?"

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