CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Her mother was very precise. At first, reading the diary was like solving a cipher: the subtle abbreviation system, those dates that looked random until one found their meaning, the names without context that suddenly, after quite a few pages were mentioned again, very clearly. Her mother realized that someone was spying on her. So she wrote in such a manner: to any person that loves her the writing is quite clear, while for others, it is perplexing. It took Aria three months to unravel the whole story. She chose a Wednesday evening in January and the place was the drafting table in the studio room. 

The journal lay open in front of her and so did her private investigator's latest report. The moment came when everything fitted nicely: the timeline of the dates and the names and the dialogues recorded  a single, understandable image and she was frozen for quite a while. She had made a mistake about her mother's murderer. It was her stepmother, in fact, whom she had quite firmly suspected. Things like the sudden marriage, the inheritance that was quietly rearranged, the stepmother's very cold, almost hostile behaviour which Aria always interpreted as a sign of guilt all that seemed to be really pointing to the stepmother. She was so sure. But the autopsy report, the genuine one, the one that had been kept secret, then buried and finally discovered by the private detective whom she had engaged with the money found in her mother's safe was revealing the truth. The traces of cyanide. The way the dosage was distributed. 

The way the food was delivered, separated from the method of the food itself being delivered, was the same as a meal made at home cooked regularly over a time span of months. Her stepmother hadn't prepared a single meal in the household for twenty years. Her dad was the one who would cook every weekend without exception. She kept the thought to herself for two days. She didn't tell Adrian. She didn't tell anyone. She went to school and worked on her collection and ate dinner and slept badly and basically just sat with the knowledge the way one sits with a really big and immensely wrong thing which one's mind constantly runs away from, refusing to take in the entire shape of it at once. Her father had poisoned her mother. Slowly, little by little, over the period of a few months, through the meals he prepared for her on Saturday mornings while Aria was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework and her mother was laughing at something on the radio. He had killed the woman he had married and then he had married his mistress and he had looked at his daughter at the funeral and said grief-appropriate things in a grief-appropriate voice, and then he had managed his business and his new family and his life without apparent consequence for four years. Aria thought about her mother's hands. Always warm. Reaching for her. She remembered in the journal the detailed, scrupulous recording of a lady who, having recognized what was happening to her, decided rather than escaping, to leave a legacy. For her daughter.

Because her mother had known, Aria's mother, that Aria would discover it in the end. That she would not give up on it. She was right. What Aria did next was very precise. She had, over the last few months, gathered from her mother's ledger, from her private investigator, from financial records to which she had gained access through means she preferred not to disclose a detailed outline of her father's business operations. He was more than a murderer. He was a cheat. 

The company he had made was dependent on a number of financial maneuvers that would not withstand scrutiny, and Aria had the evidence to show it. She took the story to two journalists. Both were known for their work in uncovering financial scandals. She handed each one a sealed package containing the evidence clearly laid out, the sources double-checked, and a legal advice from a lawyer she'd hired funded by her mother's legacy that the materials were indeed genuine. She instructed them to release the story at their discretion. Both articles came out the same morning, from different news sources, and the report was well detailed and sourced to the point that no damage control could be carried out. His stock price had dropped drastically by midday. By nightfall, three government agencies had announced a probe on the matter. The morning after, two of his main shareholders had pulled out. He phoned her thrice. She didn't pick up. He sent an email. She just read it once and then removed it without replying. 

She thought when she was supposed to be feeling triumphant or closure or a certain kind of release of a long-held breath, she was mostly just tired. And sad. And a feeling she couldn't explain which was most likely the complicated grief of killing a person she once called a parent though that person had really never even deserved that title. She went to school the next day. She had a final fitting for her collection. She had work to do. The conversation she still hadn't prepared for unexpectedly reached her that night. She decided twice during the last week that she would tell Adrian about her discovery but each time she came up with an excuse to put off telling him. Then when she was on her way to find him, she suddenly heard his voice coming from the study. The door was just slightly open. She was not eavesdropping. She was merely passing by. "I don't know how much longer this arrangement makes sense, " Adrian continued. She paused. She was really conflicted about what to do. Moving away was right. But she couldn't. "The original purpose is gone. There is no heir. The contract" The voice of his father emanated from the speaker of the desk: "Adrian. The contract was never the point. You know that." "The contract was precisely the point. It was structured around ""Around an heir you convinced yourself was the only reason you wanted her in the house." Marco Morelli's voice retained its warmth but at the same time it carried a tone of meaning that was very firm and completely clear. "Your mother and I have eyes, Adrian. We have watched you for the past six months.

"It's not the contract that keeps you in that kitchen at two in the morning, " A long silence. "I regret the marriage, " Adrian said finally, and his voice was flat and he sounded as if he was taking great care, and the voice she had come to know after months of carefully built mornings and Seychelles terraces and nightmares held at bay was nothing like that one. "It was the wrong decision. There was no heir and now there is nothing " She didn't catch the end of the sentence. Moving away from the door, she was very quiet, almost a whisper, because the alternative was making a sound that she had promised herself not to make. So she went to her room, sat on the edge of the bed, and I regretted the marriage. Those words had been spoken by her, albeit in a very different way, by a different man the first time, or rather she had heard them. And the people she loved found a peculiar way of telling her that, at the end, she was a mistake. And, there in the storage unit in Greenpoint with her mother's inheritance in her hands, she had promised herself that she wouldn't allow it to happen again. She would be the one who leaves, not the one left. 

She was done.

She was graduating. The time she had in her hands was only three weeks. She could complete her final collection, do the last runway show, get her diploma, and then use the money her mother had left her to disappear. She would start a life so completely different from others that no one would ever see her as a substitute again. Initially, she switched on her laptop and looked for apartments in Milan.