Chapter 10: Welcome Home

The villa had floor-to-ceiling windows on the garden side.

Chiara stood outside them for a full minute before she rang the bell.

She wore a gray dress, flat shoes and no jewelry except the ring.

Her phone was in her bag, zipped three-quarters, recording.

Taylor had set it up in the car with her tongue between her teeth.

"One word," Taylor had said. "If it goes bad, you say pistachio. I'll be on the street in four minutes with the cat."

"You'll bring the cat?"

"The cat has a very bad reputation."

Elio stood behind her on the gravel, three steps back, in a black suit with no tie.

He had not been asked to come, and she had not told him not to.

The door opened.

A small woman with gray in her hair stood in it, with her hands pressed together at her mouth.

She was crying before Chiara said a word.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, my girl."

Chiara's mother.

Chiara knew that, because the card had said so and Elio had said so.

She was supposed to feel nothing, so she kept her face blank.

"Hello," she said politely. "Thank you for having me."

Her mother flinched.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. "We never meant for you to suffer."

"Mom," Luca said from the hall. "Let her in."

They sat down to dinner in a dining room with a table for ten.

Her father took the head.

He did not look at her when she sat.

Luca took the chair across the table, with his bruised pride and stiff shoulders and a glass of red wine he was drinking too fast.

Her mother kept getting up to bring more dishes.

Elio sat at the foot of the table, as far as the room allowed.

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