Chapter 7
Vanessa and Dante did not magically repair their marriage.
They spent several weeks apart.
She stayed at the lake house.
He remained in the city.
They met every Thursday afternoon with a counselor whose office was above a flower shop.
I learned this accidentally when Vanessa came into Bellini’s one evening by herself.
I was back at work by then.
The investigation had cleared the restaurant of involvement.
Mr. Serrano had given me my old section.
“Unless you want Booth Seven permanently closed,” he joked.
“Please don’t.”
Vanessa sat at a small table near the window.
When I approached, she looked uncertain.
“May I stay?”
“It’s a restaurant.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
I understood.
“Yes.”
She ordered soup.
After the dinner rush faded, I brought her tea.
She looked at my bandaged hand.
The bandage was smaller now.
“I owe you an apology,” she said.
“You already apologized.”
“Not properly.”
I sat opposite her.
“You don’t have to.”
“I do.”
Her fingers circled the teacup.
“I chose you because I believed you were decent. I told myself that made what I was asking fair.”
I waited.
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
“I put you in a position where your decency became something I used.”
That was exactly what had bothered me.
I had not known how to say it.
Vanessa continued.
“I have spent a lot of my life believing that if the outcome is important enough, I am allowed to manage everyone around me.”
“Dante too?”
“Especially Dante.”
“Why?”
She smiled sadly.
“Because he is very good at appearing unmanageable.”
I laughed.
“So I kept secrets because I was afraid of how he would react. He kept his fears from me because he thought he was protecting me. Eventually we were living in the same house and each married to our own assumptions.”
“Are you going back?”
“I don’t know.”
Her answer surprised me.
“I love him.”
She looked out the window.
“But love is not the only question.”
“What are the others?”
“Whether we can learn to tell the truth before it becomes an emergency.”
I thought about that.
“My father was bad at that.”
“So was mine.”
She smiled.
“Perhaps most families are.”
When she left, she tipped twenty percent.
May you like
Exactly twenty.
I had never liked her more.
