Every Man Who Loved Me Left Hating Me, Only My Father Knows Why novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Test
At her family's Sunday dinner Jake goes into the basement smiling, comes out throwing his ring into her wine, and Lucia follows him down to the Projection Room and hears her own voice say things she never said.
Jake stood up at my father's Sunday dinner, tapped his glass and asked for my hand in front of forty people.
I had said yes to him three weeks earlier, in his bed, and told no one.
In my family, a man who wants to marry me goes down to the basement alone with my father first.
My grandfather built a private cinema down there, and everyone calls it the projection room.
Four men had gone down before Jake. All four came out hating me, and not one of them would ever tell me why.
Jake had shrugged off my warning. "Your dad just wants to size me up. I'll be out in ten minutes."
He kissed me in the garden, in front of everyone, and walked toward the house.
My father's driver was waiting at the cellar door at the side of the house, holding the basket where every guest drops their phone.
His name is Remo Tavano, and he has driven my father for nineteen years and me for most of my life.
He had driven me to dinner that afternoon, with my old cracked phone still sitting on his dashboard where it had been since April.
He kept saying he knew a man who could fix it.
"Phone," Remo said, and Jake dropped his in the basket.
Remo looked across the lawn at me and called out, "It's a formality, Lucia. Eat something."
At the head of the table sat Silvio Ruzzo, my father's oldest rival, here for the truce dinner with a box of pastries.
I had never seen him meet Jake.
He lifted his glass anyway. "Go on, Jake. We'll keep your chair warm."
I figured my father had told him.
My father, Gaetano Pesaro, went down the stairs on his cane, and Jake followed him, smiling at me over his shoulder.
The door closed.
My cousin Bianca slid into the chair beside me. "How long does this usually take?"
"Ten minutes," I said. "Same as the others."
We counted them out. Silvio passed me a cannoli and told me I looked pale.
At ten minutes the door opened.
My father came out first and sat down at the head of the table without a word.
Jake came out behind him.
His face was white and his mouth was pulled tight.
He walked straight across the lawn to me, and the whole garden went quiet.
"You laughed at me," he said. "The whole time. You sat there and let me say I loved you."
"Jake, what are you talking about?"
"Don't." He took the ring out of his jacket, the one he had shown me that morning, and held it up so everyone could see it.
He dropped it into my wine glass.
The wine splashed over my hands and onto my dress.
"My own fiancée," he said, loud enough for every table. "Sent by Daddy to make a fool of me."
"I didn't send you anywhere!"
"Stay away from me, Lucia. Stay away from my family. I mean it."
He turned and left through the side gate, and I heard his car start before the gate swung shut.
My aunt put her hand over her mouth.
Somebody at the far end of the table laughed once and stopped.
Bianca picked the ring out of my glass and set it on a napkin. "Luce, what did he see down there?"
"I don't know."
I looked at my father.
My father reached for the bread basket. "Pass the bread," he said.
Silvio put his warm hand on my shoulder. "Cara, men are fools. You're better off knowing now."
I stood up, and the wine ran off my dress onto the grass.
Five men, and it had never been a coincidence.
Nobody had asked me the one question that mattered, which was what they had seen.
So I walked across the lawn to the cellar door, and I went down the stairs myself.
Remo stood in the doorway with the basket of phones on his hip. "Lucia, not tonight."
"Move."
"Your father said."
"Then he can come down here and say it to my face."
He held my eyes a moment longer.
Then he stepped aside and let me by.
At the bottom of the stairs, the projection room door stood open. In all my life, I had never seen it open.
Inside it smelled of dust and warm metal.
The projector was still running, and its fan was loud in the dark.
On the screen, one frame hung frozen and glowing.
It was me, laughing, in a green dress I had never owned, at a table in a hotel bar I did not know.
My hand lay on the cheek of a man I had never met.
Then the speaker crackled, and my own voice filled the room.
"Papa, he's easy. He'll say anything I want."
I had never said those words in my life.
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