Chapter 26 - A HOUSE BY THE WATER
Luca rented a small cottage near Lake Geneva for a weekend in early summer. He told me there would be no family guests, no business meetings, and no plan beyond breakfast and walking. I asked whether he was certain he'd survive two days without a schedule. He said he'd packed three books, a deck of cards, and more tea than two people could reasonably drink. I agreed to go after checking that Mom wanted her own weekend plans. She told me she was attending a sewing retreat and did not require permission to enjoy it.
The cottage stood beneath tall trees with a porch overlooking a narrow strip of water. It was older than the mansion by decades and had more character than luxury. The bedroom ceiling sloped, one window refused to close completely, and the kitchen contained six mismatched mugs. Luca looked around with an expression that made me smile.
"You were expecting something larger," I said.
"I was expecting the agent's photographs to be accurate."
"They are. They just didn't photograph the broken cupboard handle."
He examined it, then laughed. "I suppose this is the sort of thing ordinary people live with."
"Ordinary people are allowed to ask the owner to fix it."
On the first evening at the cottage, we discovered that the nearest grocery store closed at six. Luca had bought pasta, mushrooms, and a bag of lemons but had forgotten oil, salt, and almost everything that made a kitchen useful. I held up the single saucepan and asked whether he had ever cooked for himself without a chef or a housekeeper arranging the ingredients first. He admitted that he had, but not recently.
"Then this is your advanced course," I told him. "We will make dinner from what we have."
He inspected the cupboard and found a small jar of dried herbs left by the owner. I checked that it was sealed and in date, then we made a simple sauce with mushrooms and the little butter we'd brought for breakfast. He stirred while I sliced bread. The kitchen was so narrow that we had to move around one another like dancers in a space too small for the music. At one point he reached past me for a plate and stopped to ask whether I wanted him to move. The question was tiny and deeply reassuring.
We ate at the table beside the window while rain darkened the lake. Luca told me he used to believe making a beautiful dinner required the most expensive ingredients. I told him making a useful dinner required food people could eat and a place they wanted to sit. He looked at the mismatched plates and smiled.
Afterward we washed dishes together. He insisted on drying because he was better at it, then dropped a spoon into the sink and splashed water on my shirt. I declared that he'd failed the final examination. He made tea as an apology. We carried the cups to the porch and listened to water tapping against the rail.
"I have a question," he said.
"You are becoming very fond of those."
"Does it frighten you that people may always remember how we met?"
I looked out at the lake. "Sometimes. I don't want our relationship to be treated as a reward for what happened at Lily's birthday. I don't want the injury to become the reason we're together."
He was quiet. Then he said, "Neither do I."
We talked about the things that had brought us here after the crisis: ordinary meals, difficult conversations, shared humor, the ways we'd both changed through work that had nothing to do with romance. He told me he liked hearing how I thought through problems at the center, even when I disagreed with him. I told him I liked the man who asked Lily about her drawings and accepted that some of her questions had no quick answer.
Later, before bed, I called Mom. She was playing cards with friends at the retreat and sounded scandalized that I'd interrupted her winning streak. I apologized and asked whether she was enjoying herself. She said yes, then told me to stop calling and enjoy my weekend. I hung up laughing.
I slept well that night. In the morning a bird tapped at the porch railing, looking for crumbs. Luca wanted to feed it bread. I suggested we let it find its own food rather than encouraging it to depend on visitors. He nodded and watched it fly away. The gesture was small. I thought about how many things we were learning to leave alone because caring didn't always mean intervening.
We made sandwiches and sat on the porch watching a sailboat turn slowly in the distance. Without the city's noise I became aware of how tired I was. The center's breach, my placement, the hearings, and the constant attention had made me treat every day as a test. Here the only question was whether the kettle had boiled.
On Saturday we walked along a public shoreline path. A woman in red sneakers passed with two dogs, and an older couple stopped to examine wildflowers. Luca asked whether I'd like to stop at a little bookshop. We spent nearly an hour among secondhand novels and field guides. I bought a book about Chicago neighborhoods for Mom and a collection of poems for myself. Luca bought a children's cookbook for Lily. The shopkeeper recommended a café, and we ate soup beneath an umbrella in a small courtyard.
At the lake I bought a postcard showing the shoreline in summer. It was a terrible photograph, all bright colors and impossible blue water. I wrote Mom a note on the back telling her that the cottage was small, the pasta had been overcooked, and I was happy. I mailed it before we left, though she would likely receive it after I'd returned home. There was pleasure in sending a message that asked for no urgent response. For once I wasn't reporting an injury or explaining a problem. I was simply telling someone I loved that I had seen a beautiful place.
For a while I forgot the Moretti name could make strangers stare. Luca did too. He told me about his father teaching him to drive in an empty parking lot and Caroline making fun of how seriously he approached every lesson. I asked whether talking about her with me was difficult.
"Sometimes," he admitted. "But pretending she never existed would hurt Lily, and it wouldn't be fair to you."
"I don't want to replace her."
"I don't want you to."
There was room in his voice for both grief and affection. I had once imagined love as a competition in which someone had to win the place closest to a person's heart. Sitting beside him, I began to believe it could be more complicated and less cruel.
That evening rain arrived suddenly. We watched it streak across the lake while Luca attempted to cook pasta in a kitchen with one usable saucepan. He overcooked the noodles and forgot to buy salt. I ate two helpings anyway. After dinner we played cards on the rug, and I discovered he was terrible at bluffing. He insisted this was because he had spent too long being surrounded by people who pretended to agree with him.
"Maybe," I said, "or maybe you just raise your eyebrows every time you have a good hand."
He practiced a neutral expression. It was so exaggerated that I laughed until my eyes watered. He laughed too, then reached across the cards and took my hand. The kiss was slower than the one outside the grocery store. We stopped when I asked, then talked about what we each wanted and what still frightened us. Nothing was owed because we'd traveled together. We could make choices one conversation at a time.
In the morning I woke before him and sat on the porch wrapped in a blanket. The lake was gray under the early light. I thought of the woman I'd been in the mansion, running through halls where the sound of a raised voice could make me tremble. My scars still ached sometimes. But they no longer decided where I was allowed to go or whom I could love.
When Luca joined me, he carried two cups of tea. We sat side by side without speaking for a long time. Then he asked whether I wanted to return later in the summer with Lily and Teresa. I said it might be lovely, provided Lily wanted to come and we found a place with a safer stair railing. He nodded, already understanding that the invitation wasn't a command.
May you like
On the drive back, my phone regained service and filled with messages. Most were harmless. One was from Tessa: the center's independent review had located the person who approved the outside vendor's access credential. The approval had been recorded under an account linked to a subcontractor, not a staff member. Investigators were following the lead.
I read the message, then placed my phone face down. The world had continued without my supervision. For two days I had been allowed to be a woman by a lake, rather than a witness, a former housekeeper, or a person who always knew what needed repairing. I wanted to remember that freedom when the next crisis arrived.
