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ChapterThirty-Three
Angelo
Imake sure Sabella is comfortable and that she has everything she needs. After serving her breakfast in bed, I bring the balloons, flowers, and chocolates from the hospital into our room. It’s good to remind her that people care about her.
Then I drop off the kids and swing by the local hospital to make a donation for a new operating wing. With the sum I’m pledging, they can fit out the new extension with state-of-the-art equipment.
My next stop is at the municipality where I donate a couple of million for building a raised pedestrian bridge over the river to avoid future accidents when there’s flooding. The mayor abandons his tea break to receive me in person. Despite his excitement about this new improvement for the village, his nervousness around me is palpable. That doesn’t stop him from presenting a few other projects while he has my much-valued attention—his words—that include building a library and a cultural center, which he proposes to name after me. I’m a few million poorer when I finally leave his office.
When I get back to the house, three cars are parked in the front. I frown. Sabella’s family isn’t due until late afternoon. I’m more curious than concerned. If there was a problem, my guards would’ve alerted me.
I ask Heidi about it when she meets me at the door.
“It’s Sabella’s friends from the village,” she whispers as she takes my coat. “I served them tea in the room. I hope you don’t mind.”
I glance at the stairs. “Of course not.”
My wife may be popular with the locals, but that doesn’t change the way they feel about me. Sabella won them over by being who she is—a caring, kind, and generous person. I’ll always be what I am.
Knowing my presence won’t be welcome, I stick my head around the doorframe to offer a greeting, which is the minimum politeness expected from a host, but the true reason for showing my face is to make sure Sabella’s visitors aren’t wearing her out.
The group from the hospital, minus the grocery store owner, is crowded in the lounge area of our bedroom. The way their backs go stiff and their smiles slip at the sight of me comes as no surprise. Before retreating to my study, I ask if they’d like more drinks or something to eat, which—no surprises either—they decline.
The first thing I do is to arrange for Sabella’s clothes and personal possessions to be moved from the new house. I give instructions for the rest of the stuff to be put in storage. Then I bury myself in work.
Heidi comes to call me for lunch. “Would you like to eat in the dining room or at your desk? I’ll take a tray up to Sabella.”
“Leave it.” I stand. “I’ll have lunch with Sabella. I’ll take the tray myself.”
The approving smile is a new look on her. She hasn’t given my decisions her blessing for a long time. “It’ll be ready in a minute. Before I head to the kitchen, would you like me to show you the rooms to make sure everything is prepared to your liking?”
A physical ache spreads through my chest, constricting my lungs and my ability to breathe. I swear this is what a heart attack must feel like. “That won’t be necessary.”
“I thought we could put Sabella’s mother in your mom’s workroom. There’s a daybed that’s comfortable. Sabella’s sister and her husband can take Adeline’s room. I put your old crib in there for the baby. Sabella’s brother and his wife and son can take the room next to yours seeing that the kids occupy the other rooms.”
She doesn’t say the room I once reserved for Sabella, the one in which I locked her in.
“Doris can sleep on the sofa bed in my quarters.” Eyeing me with uncertainty, she adds, “If that’s all right? The sleeping arrangements, I mean.”
I’m careful to keep my voice level. “That sounds good.”
She leaves with a nod.
I wait until she’s gone before I drop my mask. Once I no longer hear her footsteps in the hallway, I walk to the door.
Pause.
Hesitate.
Instead of turning for the kitchen, I head upstairs and stop on the landing.
It’s ironic how I thought I’d never let anyone set foot in those rooms again, and here I am, having them prepared for Sabella’s family. Of all people, it’s my enemies who opened those doors I barred so tightly in both a literal and figurative sense. I’d lie if I say I’m at ease with this, but I’m doing it for Sabella. Because she’s the one who breathes life into this house. She’s the one who brings beauty and kindness to these rooms. Without her, the house would’ve remained a cold, dark tomb in which the only goodness was the glimpses of a happier past trapped between its walls. I clung so hard to those movie flashes of moments, thinking if I fought hard enough, they wouldn’t fade, that I failed to notice how I turned the home my mother built into nothing but a house. Just like the gift I offered my mother. Brick and mortar. A pretty skeleton. But it missed a heart.
That’s what my mother was trying to tell me. That’s what she tried to make me see when she challenged me about Sabella’s happiness. Because when a woman is happy, her house is a home. And when a house is a home, the people who live there are a family. They can withstand the most violent storms because they have a solid foundation to keep them strong. Protection. Love. That’s the way of the world. It boils down to one simple truth. A woman is the heart of a home. It took all of this and so many years for me to understand.
The first step I take toward the west wing is painful. The second comes easier. My heart thuds in my chest in tandem with the fall of my shoes on the floor. The closer I get to their side of the house, the more difficult it becomes to breathe. When I finally stop in front of my mother’s work room, it feels as if I’ll suffocate.
Flattening a palm on the door, I push it open. Memories crash over me where I pause on the threshold—my mother sitting behind her sewing machine, smiling up at me when I enter, waving me over, and wrapping her arms around me. When I close my eyes, I smell the odor of the fried zucchini and aubergine from lunch that clings to her hair. I feel the light weight of her soft arms around me and the warm, heavy reassurance of her love.
