CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

The Morelli mansion in autumn was a completely different place than the one she had visited in a delicate rose-scented evening of May. The old oaks that flanked the driveway had turned colors deep amber and copper-rust and most typically burnt gold of October doing its most intentional work  and the scent of the place was woodsmoke and wet earth with something sweetly fermenting in the orchard beyond the east garden. The sky was the definite shade of blue that only comes after the first cold nights, a clean and vertiginous blue which invariably makes the objects under it look more like themselves.

They reached the estate on a Sunday. Adrian was behind the wheel, as he always was when they headed for Westchester, and he drove just like he did tempo most of the time efficiently, without any drama, and even leaving enough of his attention free to notice other things. She used to spend these rides in talking since the car was one of the very few zones where the regular setup of the penthouse did not hold no study to go to, no household chores to think about, just the road and the autumn and the singular feeling of being in a small space with someone and having no way to go except forward.

"Your mother called me three times this week, " she remarked, about twenty minutes into the journey.

"She calls me three times a week, " Adrian answered. "She is thorough."

"She wanted to know what I was working on at school." "She wanted to know whether I was eating enough.

"She wanted to know if the new chair in the studio room had resolved the lumbar situation." Pause. "She asked about the chair."

Aria said, "She is thorough." She used his word back at him. "Chair, I may have mentioned."

Aria said, "You told your mother about my chair." "I told her the chair had been arranged for moving as the older furniture was insufficient for prolonged sitting during the last stages of pregnancy. She made a leap to whatever came after the hand-holding stage in pregnancy."

"Three phone calls about my lumbar spine in nature of the extrapolation." "She is very interested in the welfare of her grandchild."

"And the lumbar spine of the grandchild's mother, too." "Structurally, they are connected."

Aria looked at him. He was looking at the road. She was almost completely certain there was something happening in the corner of his mouth that was not quite a smile but was doing its best impression of one. "You are impossible, " she said.

"I am practical, " he said. Looking out the window at the oaks in their fall colors going by she thought: I am going to fall in love with you, Adrian Morelli. I think I may already be in the process, which is inconvenient and possibly catastrophic and also completely beyond my ability to prevent, and I am going to have to figure out what to do about that.

She never uttered such a thing. Instead, her words were: "At what time is Roman coming?"

That was more than just a question, it was a provocation. She was eager to see his reaction upon hearing the name, and she kept her eyes on his face very closely watching the small change in expression that came just before the controlled expression, the tiny moment before he put himself back together.

"He initially mentioned twelve o'clock, " said Adrian, "Exactly our time, right?"

She acknowledged by nodding and then returned her gaze to the oak trees.

Elena's kitchen was the real heart of the Westchester house. The formal dining room with its long table and generations of silverware was not quite her thing. The kitchen, on the other hand, was quite large and warm, always producing something and to Elena, it was the perfect place for any type of gathering.

She very quickly got Aria to be her partner-in-crime and that was on the basis that the salad was a little demanding and besides, Aria came to the conclusion that the real reason was that Elena Morelli was a kind of woman who, when she liked someone, she pulled them into the room where she was working and that was how she showed her love.

"Give me a run-down on the collection, " said Elena, as she passed her a lemon.

"A ten-piece set. The concept is a woman who has just decided not to apologize anymore when she takes up space."

Elena looked at her friendship. Not through the lens of disagreement, but through recognition. "That is very detailed, " she said.

"Delacroix says the best briefs always are."

"Your teacher is right." Elena her way around the island as though she had lived in this kitchen for years and years. "And is she really? This woman."

"I guess she hasn't figured out what she wants to be called yet, " Aria confided. "But she is sure of what she isn't now. That's usually the first step."

Elena held her peace for a short time. She then balanced her hand slightly on Aria's arm just the contact, just the warmth of it and returned to the stove.

At the table, Marco and Adrian were having a conference about a vineyard that had been the subject in that house for the last three weeks. Roman, who was at the very end, was having a serious conversation with Marco's elder brother Vittorio about motorcycle engines. In that moment, he was radiating warmth and proficiency, with the fluency of someone who, for whom warmth was, not a natural state but a, practiced instrument.

She observed him while she chopped the lemon.

Once he noticed her eyes on him and he gave a smile: a big, broad, and with a particular quality of a man who wanted to be caught and wanted her to know it. Her smile came easily as a response. Down she looked at the lemon.

For weeks, she had been, somewhat unconsciously, watching Roman as though they were architectural drawings: scouting for load-bearing elements, places where the structure was actually 'doing' work as opposed to places where it was only 'decorative.' What she had discovered, over and over again, was that the warmth was a mere decoration. It was lovely and functional but at the same time simply hiding quite effectively what was underneath.

What was underneath was not warmth

She was unsure exactly what to call it. It couldn't be cruelty that would have been too straightforward and glaring. Something more indifferent. Something that might have a purpose she had not quite figured out yet.

She filed it. She prepared the salad. Then she took it to the table and sat next to Adrian, who gave her the water without even glancing at her as he was engrossed in arguing with his father about Nebbiolo. And she thought: I am discovering your form. I am coming to know you entirely. And some parts of what I am discovering will be the result of a dialogue that I simply cannot have right now.

Elena took Elena downstairs and showed her the family pictures hanging along the long east wing. Aria had never laid eyes on these before. They reached a silver-framed photo of a boy, about eleven years old, in a dark coat sitting very upright on a garden chair. He looked at the camera with the distinct composure of someone who had been rehearsing composure for longer than was even remotely necessary at the age of eleven.

"His first Christmas here, " Elena explained, again in a whisper. "We asked him what he wanted. He said he didn't know. He said nobody had asked him before."

Aria looked at the boy in the picture. The chin was already prominent, already firm. The face that had been so carefully, so thoughtfully put together to hide whatever feelings it contained.

"What did you do?" she asked.

"Marco went to town and bought every children's book he could find. He completely stuffed the boy's room with them. Adrian managed to read all of them by New Year's Day." Elena stopped to take a breath. "I bought him a dog. He tried to figure out the name of a Roman emperor for it. When it died, after eight years, he told his friends he had a tear in his eye."

Aria chuckled a brief, sincere note that the still gallery appeared to suspend for a moment.

"He is capable of that, " Elena remarked. "That and the rest of it. It just so happens he has been looking for quite some time for someone to be patient enough to wait him out."

Aria glanced at the picture. Her mind went to the packed suitcase at the door. Not coming fully into good things for fear they might vanish.

"I have patience, " she offered.

Elena regarded her with kindness. "Yes, " she responded. "I believed that long before you told me present."