Chapter 1

When I opened my eyes again, I was standing outside the door.

I reached out to push it open. My hand passed through the glass.

I walked into the shadows behind the flowers and found myself curled on the floor, my forehead resting against the base of a stand.

Footsteps sounded in the hallway. Luca was back.

Adrian followed him, along with Nico, a childhood friend who now ran the Vitti family’s fleet of cars.

Celina hurried to meet them, her eyes red.

“She still won’t talk to me.”

She turned toward the conservatory, her voice soft and pleading.

“Elena, if you don’t want me here, I’ll go. Just don’t keep Luca waiting, okay?”

Adrian saw her clutching her wedding ring. His expression hardened.

“You don’t have to go anywhere.”

Then he called to me through the door.

“Mom’s here. Everyone’s waiting. Whatever this is about, come out and we’ll talk.”

Nico leaned toward the glass. Through the flowers, all he could see was my bowed head and part of one shoulder.

“Try talking to her again, Luca. She always listened to you.”

Even he thought my silence meant I was waiting for Luca to give in.

Luca said nothing.

He took out a folded letter, smoothed it open, and held it against the glass.

It was from the art restoration studio in Florence.

Last year, I had postponed a short residency there to help him settle things after the old don’s death.

By the time I reapplied, there were no places left.

“A spot opened up. They got in touch again,” he said. “We can go next month. I’ll stay with you for all six weeks.”

He paused, then added, “No last-minute changes this time.”

I drifted back through the door and looked at the letter he had so carefully smoothed flat.

I had wanted this for so long.

Now all that could go with him was a shadow no one could see.

When I didn’t answer, he slowly lowered the letter.

“At least look at me, Elena.”

His voice softened.

I remembered when I used to fall asleep at the studio and he couldn’t bear to wake me.

The first time I went to Italy to study, I worked so late one night that I fell asleep at my desk.

I woke up on Luca’s back as he carried me down the street toward my apartment, his shirt damp with sweat.

When I asked how he had found me, he said one of my coworkers had let him upstairs before leaving.

“Then why didn’t you wake me?”

“You hardly ever sleep that well.” He smiled and shifted me higher on his back.

He could still be that tender. But whenever Celina called, his arms would loosen around me.

After Marco died, Luca made her flower shop a regular supplier to the family’s businesses and found her a place to live.

I had never objected. The first time she went home without her husband, I was the one who helped her put away the boots he had left by the door.

But eventually, Luca was the only person she needed.

A call from an unknown number, and he had to come over. A nightmare about Marco covered in blood, and she needed him again.

She said seeing Luca alive was the only way she could believe her husband hadn’t died for nothing.

Once, after I had been discharged from the hospital, Luca called to say he would pick me up soon.

I sat there with a bag of clothes in my lap, waiting until afternoon turned to evening.

When my phone finally lit up, the message was from Celina.

“Sorry, I’m borrowing your fiancé tonight. I just couldn’t face eating alone.”

Below it was a photo of Luca sitting across the table from her, still wearing the clothes he’d had on when he left my hospital room that morning.

I opened our messages. Two hours earlier, he had told me not to call a car. To wait for him.

In the end, I went home alone. Luca came back late that night and explained that Celina had suddenly been overwhelmed by grief. He couldn’t leave her like that.

I asked why he couldn’t have called me when his plans changed.

He held me and promised it wouldn’t happen again.

But whenever she called, he still told me, “Go on home. I won’t be long.”

Now I had finally stopped asking him to hurry.

And he was the one growing anxious.