My Sister Popped The Bubble Of My Happy Marriage novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Portrait
At her mother's birthday, Mirella overhears her sister and husband in the staff corridor, watches the family portrait, and decides to stop chasing and start collecting; the silent valet hands her a card.
At my mother's sixtieth birthday, I walked out of the toast with sixty guests watching and went through the staff door behind the cloakroom.
I only wanted somewhere nobody would ask where I had been.
For two years, everybody had asked.
The corridor was narrow, with a tile floor and a coat rail at the far end.
A valet in a dark jacket stood beside the rail with his back to me, straightening garment bags.
He was the man who brought my car around at every Roselli dinner, and in two years he had never said a word to me.
I was halfway down the hall when I heard my husband's voice through the stairwell door, which stood open a hand's width.
"How much longer, Fiorella? I want to stand next to you in a room and say it."
"Not tonight." My sister's voice was low and kind, the way it was when she sat up with me through a fever. "Mirella has nobody else. If I go too, she won't get back up."
I put my hand flat on the wall.
For two years I had read Adriano's card statements and called his assistants.
I had cornered every woman who laughed too long at his jokes.
Fiorella had helped me. She sat on my bed with the printouts and promised we would find her.
I had been looking for the woman who was sitting beside me.
Their footsteps went up the stairs and faded.
The valet did not turn around. He stood with his face to the coat rail until the sound was gone, and then he went on with the garment bags.
When I got back to the upper room, Fiorella was already next to Mother, waving at me.
"Mirella, where did you go? You've been gone forever."
She came around the table with my coat and settled it on my shoulders, and her fingers touched my neck.
I stepped back from her hand.
"You're ice," she said, and her eyes were so worried that I almost believed I had dreamed the corridor.
Her sleeve slid up when she reached for my forehead.
The pale scar on her wrist showed. She got it when I was eight and she was eleven, the night Mother locked me in my room and Fiorella smuggled me dinner and took the slap that was meant for me.
She had held me afterward, bleeding on my pajamas, and said she would always protect me.
Now she was feeling my forehead for a fever, and I moved my head away.
"It's nothing."
Adriano pushed the door open and sat down next to me with an easy face.
"Sorry. Work call."
"What work?" I said.
He opened his mouth.
Fiorella slid a bowl of soup in front of me. "Let him breathe, Mirella. He's been on his feet all day. Stop interrogating him."
She said it just as he finished his breath, and neither of them looked at the other, and it fit together perfectly.
After the cake, Mother gathered the family on the staircase landing for the portrait.
The photographer was a tall man with two cameras around his neck. He counted us down from three.
Confetti fell from the net above us, and a piece of it landed in my sister's hair.
Adriano reached out and picked it off.
His fingers stayed in her hair.
Fiorella tilted her face up to him, and neither of them moved while the shutter kept firing.
I stood a foot away from them with Mother's hand on my elbow.
Fiorella looked off first. Adriano took his hand back and straightened his cuff.
I walked down two steps to the photographer.
"Would you send me every frame from that shot? Not the picks. All of them. My mother wants the whole set."
"All of them?" He shrugged. "Sure. I'll upload the full set tonight."
I gave him my email and watched him write it down.
When I turned around, Fiorella was leaning on the wall with one shoe lifted.
"I think I twisted my ankle."
Adriano was on the floor in front of her before she finished the sentence, holding her foot in both hands.
He looked up at me with his jaw tight. "Your sister is hurt. Why didn't you help her?"
I looked at him and said nothing.
He drove Fiorella home himself. Father told me to take a taxi.
I was still on the club steps when my phone buzzed twice, and the two messages arrived together.
Fiorella: Adriano dropped me off. Please don't fight with him over me.
Adriano: Fiorella has always looked out for you. Accuse me of anything you like, but don't you dare hurt her.
I checked the time stamps. They were only seconds apart.
I stood there with the phone in my hand, and I decided it.
So I stopped chasing the mistress and started keeping every piece of proof.
The valet was holding the taxi door open when I came down to the curb.
He did not speak. He laid my forgotten scarf across my knees, and with it he slid a plain white card into my palm.
Printed on it were a phone number and one line.
When you stop asking, call. I have what your grandfather left you. L. Bruni.
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