I Let My Sister Have the Man Who Broke My Heart novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Saint's Lamp
Gemma dies the night she learns her husband was a joke, wakes at her mother's marriage table, takes the sick man's file, and overhears her sister call the man she just refused by his first name.
At the winter festival, my sister stood on the church steps and held up the silver lamp my family had carried for sixty years.
Two hundred people clapped.
I had worked a whole year for that lamp.
The women in my family pass it to the daughter who keeps the books, and I had kept them since I was twenty-two.
My sister smiled down at me from the top step.
"Don't look so shocked," she said. "Your husband says it was always going to be mine."
He had given me his name, his house and two years of kind words, and I had believed every one.
"The warehouse deeds and the shipping contracts too," my sister said. "He sent them over the day you signed them."
My phone buzzed in my hand.
It was a photo from her.
My husband, who had kissed my forehead and warmed my coffee that morning, stood in a black mask in the Albano garage, handing the lamp to her across a car hood.
It was dated the night he told me he was working late with his lawyers.
I drove home and waited for him in the kitchen.
He came in at midnight, took off his coat and did not even pretend.
"Yes, I gave it to her."
"Why?"
"She's your sister, and she's marrying a Tessari next spring," Cesare said. "Humiliate her and the ceasefire we just signed is dead."
He poured himself a glass of wine.
"You have everything, Gemma. Leave her something."
I had learned to hold my temper for him.
I had stayed up through two winters sorting his hidden ledgers so his father would approve of me.
He had told me I was his wife and that he was on my side.
I looked at his face and understood that I had never been a wife in that house.
I had been a joke he told Carla in bed.
I took my keys and walked out into the rain.
He called my name from the porch, and he did not run after me.
I drove toward the bridge with the wipers going and the radio off.
At the red light on Atlantic, my phone lit up on the passenger seat.
It was Cesare.
Where are you? Carla needs the books for tomorrow.
I laughed, and the light turned green, and a truck that never slowed filled the whole windshield.
Then it was dark.
When I opened my eyes, I was sitting at my mother's dining table, and the afternoon sun was on the tablecloth.
Two manila folders lay in front of me.
Mother stood at the head of the table in her pearls.
I knew this day.
It was two years before my death, and I was twenty-seven again.
"Choose, Gemma," Mother said. "One husband each. Carla takes whoever you leave."
Carla sat across from me in a yellow dress, with her eyes already on my hands.
In my first life, Carla had always reached for whatever I picked.
I used to pick the brooch she liked and the seat she wanted just to watch her face.
That was how I had chosen the folder on the left.
Cesare Albano.
He was the Tessari family's worst enemy, which meant he was Carla's fiancé's worst enemy, and I had married him to make her furious.
This time I pulled the other folder toward me before Carla could breathe.
Mother looked at the photo clipped to the front and her shoulders dropped.
"Luca Amadori?"
"We've known each other since we were children," I said.
"His mother would welcome it, and I would too," Mother said. "But he has always had weak lungs."
She took a breath.
"The doctors say he may not see forty."
In the photo, Luca stood on a boat deck in a cold wind with a thick rope in his bare hands.
He was laughing.
Every other man behind him wore a heavy coat, and he wore a shirt.
I thought, so that is what weak lungs look like in Miami.
"You'd really move to Florida for him?" Mother asked.
"Yes."
She could write to Mrs. Amadori that night and confirm the promise our mothers had made when Luca and I were children.
In my last life, I had agreed to that promise.
Then I had thrown it away to win a fight with my sister.
Carla jumped to her feet.
"I want Luca too," she said. "Gemma only grabbed him first."
Mother's face went hard.
"You will not go after the man your sister chose."
She turned to me and her voice softened.
"Do you want to spend your best years beside a sick man and end up a widow in Miami?"
When I first said Luca's name, she had not said a word about widows.
She saw that I had noticed, and she took my hand.
"I only said it to make your sister sit down."
In my first life, I would have glowed at being her favorite.
Now I pulled my hand away.
I tucked my CPA license into Luca's folder and closed it.
"Write to Mrs. Amadori tonight," I said.
I went out to the hall for air and stopped at the corner.
Carla was by the window with her phone against her ear.
She did not see me.
"She picked the sick one, Cesare," my sister whispered. "Yes, tonight. You get what you wanted. She's out of the way."
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