Page 119 of Dante

“I was fourteen and pumping hormones,” I tell him. “Don’t flatter yourself.”

“Why not? If the mafia gig doesn’t pan out, at least I know I can make a living impressing girls.”

“All right, then. If not then, when did you fall in love with me?”

“It’s hard to say.”

“Try. When?”

He is quiet for a moment. “You were eating Cap’n Crunch, reading the back of the box. Early on, maybe our first week together.”

I narrow my eyes. “What’s so romantic about that?”

“You have an odd idea about romance,” he says, taking my hand and pressing each finger in turn.

“Romance isn’t a Hallmark card. It’s falling in love with the little things that make the person you love, the person you love. It’s everything you do, Gina. I could watch you all day.”

I grab a lounge pillow and hit him with it. He catches it, laughing. Really laughing.

“Shall we go to our room?” he says, his voice dropping.

“Yes,” I say. “But first, I need to ask about Mary.”

He sets the pillow down and looks at me.

My body tenses as I prepare for one of his icy stares or stormy moods.

“Ask,” he finally says.

“Everyone said you’d never remarry. You kept her room like a shrine. For the longest time, I wondered if you even noticed I was your wife.” I hold his gaze. “Did you love her?”

“No,” he says.

Just that.

“Then why⁠—”

“Mary was an arrangement. Like ours. At the start, I respected her. I was faithful to her.” He pauses. “That’s not love.”

“The room,” I say. “Explain why you kept her room.”

He looks at me steadily. “In my world, a man who clears out his dead wife’s belongings too quickly is a man who either killed her or never respected her. Both are dangerous.” He pauses. “It was a calculation.”

I let that sit for a moment. “So it was never a shrine.”

“It was strategy,” he says. “Nothing more.”

I believe him. I believe him because this explanation is so utterly Dante that nothing else could be true.

“And her death,” I say. “The tabloids⁠—”

“She was drunk. She fell. The coroner was right.” His voice is flat and final. “Tabloids sell papers.”

One more thing. The thing underneath all of it. “Why did you throw out all her things and have the room painted blue before this trip?”

He looks at me with a little smile.

“We might have need of that room soon. Biscotti’s been telling me he’s eager for a baby brother. Shall we go upstairs?” he says again.