The Last Time You Chose Her novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Guests Get No Vote

By five in the morning the kitchen was empty of men.

Two of Pietro's drivers had come in the dark and taken the pair away in a van, one of them still crying about his leg.

Pietro's surgeon had come after them with his bag.

He stitched the groove along Pietro's upper arm at the same kitchen table where he had stitched me.

Now Pietro sat on the edge of the army cot in the study with his left arm in a sling.

I stood in the doorway with a glass of water.

He didn't take it.

"Drink," I said.

"I'm fine."

"You're white as the sheet."

"Marta." He looked at the floor. "I stood under the kitchen window yesterday, in the garden. I heard all of it."

I put the glass down on the desk.

"She asked you to come home," he said. "She cried. She held you."

"She did."

"Your mother." His jaw worked. "I've watched women choose that. They hear the one voice they've waited their whole lives to hear, and they go back, and they say they're only going for a day."

"Is that what you think I'll do?"

"I think I wouldn't blame you."

"Pietro."

"If you want to go home tomorrow, I'll drive you to the gate myself."

I looked at him.

He sat there with his arm strapped to his chest and his face turned away.

He was ready to hand me back to the woman who had left me on a steel table.

I crossed the room.

I took his chin in my hand and turned his face up.

"Guests," I said, "don't get a vote."

His breath caught.

"You said it yourself. Guest, not wife. Guests do what the house tells them." I pushed him back onto the cot by his good shoulder. "And the house says you lie still."

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