Page 47
“Not just sex,” Carly says, and I feel my cheeks warm. She grins. “Though that helps. I mean the day-to-day. The rules—our rules.”
“What rules?”
She counts them off on her fingers. “We have date night every Friday unless a job physically prevents it. If he’s going to be home after midnight, I want a phone call. Not a text. A call because I want to hear his voice so I know he’s okay. And the basic understanding that I am a person in this marriage, not furniture. Gio hardly ever misses a Friday now.”
I hold my glass in both hands, the condensation cool against my palms. “And he just accepted those rules?”
“Of course,” she replies. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t accept his. Tit for tat and all that.”
“What if I don’t know what I need?”
Carly shrugs. “Then start smaller. What would make next week better than this week?”
The question is so simple it catches me off guard. I stare at my pasta, which is mostly gone now, and try to think about next week.
“I want him to tell me if he won’t be home for dinner,” I say slowly. The words feel strange in my mouth, like a language I’m learning. “So I’m not sitting around wondering whether to wait for him.”
Carly nods encouragingly.
“I want him to tell me when he’s leaving our bed in the middle of the night. Instead of waking up and finding him gone.”
That’s only happened once or twice, and he was always back in the morning. But, still. Those times were all it took for me to know I can’t live like that.
“Anything else?” Carly prompts.
Steeling myself, I drink some of my lemonade before putting the glass down. Then I tell her about Greg, what Domenico did, and how responsible I’ve felt.
“Let me stop you right there,” Carly cuts in. “Domenico might have been bad at explaining what he meant, but he didn’t just do that for you, you know.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s expected of men like him and Gio,” she explains. “They can’t just let other men touch or intimidate their woman. It’s a whole thing, one you can’t argue with. It just is. So, he was right when he said Greg was alive because of you, because I’ve seen Gio kill a man for less.”
She says it so casually, as though it’s nothing. As though it’s fine. But it’s not fine, is it?
Greg scared me. Domenico hurting him made me feel safer. Somehow, both of those things are true, and I hate that they are.
“You’re Catholic, right?” Carly asks.
“Yes.”
“Does that make all of this harder?”
I stare down at the condensation running along my glass. “Sometimes. I believe taking a life is wrong. I know Father Joseph would never tell me otherwise.” I rub my thumb through the moisture. “But if Greg had actually tried to hurt me, I would’ve wanted Domenico to stop him. I just…” I shake my head. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.”
Carly is quiet for a moment. “Maybe nothing.”
I look up.
“I don’t believe in God, and I still don’t like killing,” she says. “But being married to Gio taught me I don’t have to approve of everything he does to understand why he does it. Sometimes I hate what he’s capable of. Sometimes I’m grateful he’s capable of it.” She shrugs. “Both can be true.”
I sit with that for a moment because, annoyingly, it makes more sense than I want it to. As I think about it, I realize I have one more rule.
“After Greg,” I continue, my voice dropping, “I want a warning if unfamiliar men are going to be in the penthouse. I don’t want to walk into a room and find strangers there.”
“That’s reasonable.”
It’s not necessarily my rule, though. Not when Domenico already made changes so only the relevant people have access. But the more I think about it, it’s not the access that grinds on me. It’s that I had no warning to what I walked in on. Greg all bloodied. I don’t want to see that ever again.
