Chapter 5: The Price of a Roof

Valentina POV

The man opened the door before my hand could even reach the wood.

He stood flat-footed in the frame, blocking the light from the hallway. He didn’t say hello. Instead, his eyes dropped to my boots, tracked slowly up my faded jeans, and lingered on my flat stomach before finally settling on my face. He looked at me the way a man looks at a horse he is thinking about buying at auction—calculating the cost against the teeth, checking to see if the beast is worth the price of its feed.

I was twenty-two years old, six weeks pregnant, and completely flat-bellied. Everything I owned in the world was stuffed into a single canvas bag cutting into my shoulder. Under his stare, I forced my spine straight. I refused to look down.

"You're the girl Giulia sent," he said.

"Yes," I said. "I'm Valentina."

He didn't offer his own name. He just stepped back into the dim warmth of the entryway, leaving the door open. "You'll work for your stay here. That's the deal, no free rides."

"What kind of work?"

He waved his hand through the air, a dismissive flick of his wrist as if the details were too small for a man like him to bother naming. "Everything. Whatever needs doing. The house, the chores. Whatever my wife says."

I swallowed the lump of pride in my throat and nodded. I had already run out of money, options, and time. I had decided before I even got off the bus that I would ask no more questions tonight.

"I understand," I said.

I pulled my bag tighter against my hip and walked past him, stepping over the threshold into the house.

A woman was waiting at the end of the narrow hallway, framed by the yellow light of a kitchen doorway. She was small and bone-thin, with sharp, bird-like features and dark eyes that seemed to notice every tear in the fabric of the world. She didn't smile. As I approached, her gaze flicked to my bag, lingered heavily on my stomach, and then locked onto my face.

She looked like a mathematician who had just finished a difficult problem in her head and arrived at exactly the grim answer she expected.

"Can you cook?" she asked, her voice hollow.

"Yes."

"Clean?"

"Yes, I can do both."

"Your room is small," she said, cutting me off before I could offer anything else. "Through there. The bathroom is at the end of the hall. You use it in the morning before five-thirty, or you wait until after we are finished. No long showers. Hot water costs money."

She didn't wait for me to agree. She turned on her heel and led me straight toward the back of the house, toward the kitchen. "Come. I'll show you where the supplies are kept. Tomorrow you start early."

I followed the quiet slap of her slippers against the linoleum. As I walked, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could feel the man still standing by the front door, his heavy gaze burning into my back as he watched me disappear into his house.

The room they gave me was tiny. It felt less like a bedroom and more like a wooden box meant for storage.

There was a narrow cot with a thin white sheet, a single straight-backed wooden chair, and a scarred dresser with a broken brass handle dangling from the bottom drawer. The lone window was small and high up, looking out at nothing but a patch of grey dirt and the stained concrete wall of the neighboring house.

I dropped my canvas bag onto the floor, sat on the edge of the cot, and pressed my palm against the mattress. It was hard, the springs protesting with a metallic groan under my weight.

This is only for now, I told myself, staring at the cracked plaster on the ceiling. This is just a step to get where I need to go.

The work started at exactly six o'clock the next morning.

When I walked into the kitchen, the woman was already standing by the stove, a cup of black coffee in one hand and a long sheet of lined paper in the other. The list was so dense with handwriting that it curled up at the bottom edge. She held it out to me as soon as I crossed the threshold, omitting any hint of a greeting.

"Floors first," she said, her voice sharp in the quiet morning air. "Then the downstairs bathroom. Then the windows in the front room. My husband likes them clear enough to see his reflection when he stands on the street. If he sees a single spot, you'll do the glass again."

I took the paper from her fingers. The ink was aggressive, written with heavy downward strokes. "I understand."

"No." She stepped closer, invading my space until I could smell the bitter coffee on her breath. Her eyes moved deliberately down to my stomach, holding there for three agonizing seconds before snapping back to my face. "You don't understand yet. But you will."

She turned to leave the kitchen, her apron strings fluttering behind her, then suddenly stopped near the doorframe.

"I'm Marta," she said, speaking over her shoulder as if she had simply forgotten a minor detail and felt the need to correct the mistake. "The man who opened the door last night is Franco. My husband."

"Valentina," I said, though I knew she already knew.

She gave a single, tight nod. "Marta."

Then she walked out, leaving me alone with the list and a bucket of cold water.

The first week was hard. The second week was harder. By the third week, the days blurred together. I stopped counting the hours on the kitchen clock and simply moved like a machine from one task to the next, my fingers raw from the harsh soap.

On a hot Tuesday morning, Franco came out to the front porch to check my progress.

I had been on my knees scrubbing the stone steps for over an hour. My joints ached, a dull, throbbing pain radiating through my lower back. At five months pregnant, my center of gravity had shifted entirely, making every position a battle against gravity. I was on my hands and knees with a stiff-bristled brush, forcing the grey soap into the porous stone, sweat dripping from my jaw.

A pair of shoes appeared at the top of the steps. Brown leather. Expensive. Flawlessly polished. The kind of shoes that belonged to a man who had never held a broom or cleared a drain in his life.

"You missed a spot," Franco said from above me.