Chapter 8 She Doesn't Care About Anything

Elena glanced at them from the couch and went back to the TV.

Julian didn't say anything either. He set his keys in the bowl by the door a little harder than he needed to.

Bianca was the one who spoke first.

"Ms. Rossi." She smiled. "We meet again."

"A pipe burst in Bianca's building," Julian said, to no one in particular. "Her whole place is flooded. She's going to stay here for a few days."

Elena kept her eyes on the screen. Some cooking show was on. She wasn't really watching it.

Seven more days.

Bianca was going to end up in this house sooner or later. Elena would just be gone by then.

"She's easy to get along with," Julian went on. "Try to be nice to her while she's here, okay? Maybe you two will even be friends."

Elena turned her head and looked at him.

He wanted her to be friends with Bianca.

"You brought her home so I'd have someone to hang out with?" she said.

"I'm helping an old friend. That's all this is."

"Okay."

He waited, but there wasn't anything else. He loosened his tie.

"You two talk," he said. "You hate the smell of booze. I'm going to shower."

He went upstairs.

The second his footsteps faded, Bianca's smile dropped off her face.

She sat down on the arm of the couch and looked at Elena.

"So you saw the video," she said. "Then you know who he loves. Posting those dresses tonight? You made yourself a joke."

Elena reached for the remote and turned the volume down a notch.

"I posted three dresses," she said. "I never said a word about marrying him. Why are you so worked up?" She looked up at Bianca. "He's not exactly rushing to marry you either, is he?"

Bianca's face tightened. For a second she didn't bother hiding what she thought of Elena.

"You're good at acting like none of this bothers you," she said. "Let's see how long you can keep it up."

"Not as good as you are at acting," Elena said.

20 minutes later, Julian came back downstairs in a T-shirt, his hair still wet.

Bianca was on her feet by then, walking slowly around the living room with her arms folded.

"Julian, these curtains are kind of sad," she said. "And that vase doesn't go with anything in here."

She bent over the vase on the coffee table, wrinkled her nose, and covered it with her hand. "And I'm allergic to pollen. Can we get rid of these?"

Elena had hung those curtains herself. Sand-colored linen, two summers ago, after a whole Saturday comparing samples. She'd bought the vase from a potter at the Sunday market in Wynwood. The white peonies in it she'd arranged that morning before her shift.

Bianca knew that. She hadn't picked those three things by accident.

Julian looked over at Elena.

She was still watching the cooking show. Her face hadn't changed.

His brows pulled together. Why wasn't she saying anything? Didn't she care?

"If you don't like them, change them," he told Bianca. "Get whatever you want."

His eyes stayed on Elena for another second. Then, in a tone that was meant to land somewhere, he added, "If you're allergic, throw the flowers out."

Elena watched the two of them go back and forth and didn't say a word.

It wasn't her house. They could do what they liked with it.

Bianca took the silence for hurt. Something bright and satisfied crossed her face. She thought she'd won something.

Julian called toward the kitchen. "Martha!"

Martha came out, drying her hands on a towel.

"Take that vase and the flowers out. Throw them away."

Martha looked at the peonies, then at Elena, and hesitated. "Mr. Costa, those are Miss Rossi's. She just did them this morning."

Julian's jaw set. "She doesn't care about the flowers," he said. "She doesn't seem to care about anything."

He was looking at Elena when he said it.

"It's fine, Martha," Elena said. "Go ahead and toss them."

Today the flowers. Next week, her.

Martha picked up the vase and carried it out the back door.

Bianca slipped her arm through Julian's. "Come with me tomorrow to pick out new curtains? Please? You have such good taste."

Julian looked at Elena again.

Nothing. She was reading the closed captions on a commercial.

Irritation prickled up the back of his neck. He'd just had her flowers thrown in the trash, and she wasn't angry? He'd always liked that she was easy. Agreeable. She never made his life harder. But this was too much. This was his house. Their house. Bianca was in here rearranging the furniture, and Elena sat there acting like it had nothing to do with her.

Did she even think of this as home anymore?

Did she still think she was his girlfriend?

For the first time in three years, he found he didn't like how agreeable she was.

"Julian?" Bianca tugged on his arm. "Tomorrow? Curtains?"

"We'll see," he said flatly, and went to get a drink.

Bianca stayed.

She took the guest room at the end of the hall. Her suitcases stayed in the foyer for two days before Martha carried them up. Her shampoo moved into the downstairs bathroom. Her coffee mug moved into Elena's cabinet.

Julian left early and came home late. On the nights he came home at all, Bianca waited up for him in the kitchen.

Elena worked doubles. Between shifts, she packed. Eight boxes went to a shipping office on Coral Way and from there to a New York address Julian had never asked for.

On the ninth day, the day before her last surgery, Bianca redecorated.

Elena came home from a 14-hour shift to find two delivery vans in the driveway. Men were carrying rolled curtains and new lamps and a glass coffee table through the front door. On the curb sat four black trash bags. One of them had split. Sand-colored linen spilled out of it onto the sidewalk.

Bianca stood in the middle of the living room directing traffic. When Elena walked in, she turned, met her eyes, and smiled the kind of smile a person gives when they've been waiting all day to give it.

Elena walked past her.

She didn't care what Bianca did to the living room. Tomorrow she'd do her last surgery. Tomorrow night she'd be gone.

She went upstairs.

The bedroom door was open. Someone had been in here too. New curtains hung on the windows, pale gray with silver thread.

The room was empty.

On the floor by the dresser lay a scatter of white porcelain.

Elena stopped in the doorway.

The glass dome sat on the bed, upright, without a scratch on it.

The doll was on the floor in a dozen pieces. A blue skirt. Half of a face. A small gold star, snapped off clean. The base had cracked straight through the middle of the letters. ISABELLA on one piece. ELENA on the other.

Her mother had it made in Naples the year Elena was born. A porcelain girl no bigger than her hand, in a blue dress, holding up a gold star, with their two names on the base. Her mother had died when Elena was eight. Of everything in that house in New York, the doll was the one thing Elena had carried out with her.

For a second, she couldn't breathe.

Then the anger hit. Three years of swallowing things. Three years of being told to be bigger about it, of waiting up, of being easy. All of it at once. Her hands were shaking.

She turned and walked out of the room.

"Bianca!"

She shouted it down the stairs. Below her, the delivery men stopped where they were.

"Did you do this?"