Page 83 of These Thin Lines

IN A FARAWAY LAND OF FINGERTIPS AND ATONEMENT

Chiara Conti thought that when it rained, it just kept pouring. And then pouring some more. The nagging headache at her temples slithered down to the nape of her neck, where it settled for the day, making itself very comfortable all the while makingChiarawant to just keep on weeping.

She’d cried when she woke up beside Vi—at her own inability to stop loving this woman whom she did not trust. Then she cried when Frankie waltzed right back into her life as if she’d never really left, and once again tried to establish the rules by which the entire game was to be played. Talk about eerily familiar events.

And now, as the camera flashed in front of her eyes over and over again, Chiara simply wanted to cry in pain, the headache leaving her listless and numb, while her bones felt so fragile that a feathered touch might shatter them.

The smile she gave Morag as she applied yet another layer of concealer under her throbbing eyes must have looked weak at best, because the older woman just shook her head and reached for something else to goop on top of the heaps of makeup already failing to hide her rough day.

The interviewer was back as well, and both she and Renate were running through a series of questions, venturing from the profound and serious to the shallow and funny, and Chiara was grateful that she didn’t have to speak. To her, the words were all a mixture of incomprehensible sounds.

And through it all, Vi was watching her with a look Chiara knew very well. It was the concerned Vi Courtenay stare. The one Chiara was familiar with from all those years ago, when the younger, less tortured version of Vi would be touchingly worried about Chiara forgetting to eat, or about her working way too late, or whatever else Chiara had found herself getting lost in.

“Perhaps we should take a break?” Vi’s voice broke Chiara’s reverie with the force of a hammer. She must have winced visibly, because a moment later, all eyes were on her, and Vi was suddenly so much closer, her gentle hands on Chiara’s shoulders, propping her up.

“Yeah, okay, I think we are finished for the day, people. Morag, we will start early tomorrow. I will text you the details. Chiara needs rest.”

The déjà vu—and why exactly was she having so many of them—was so strong, it made Chiara snort, which in turn made Vi’s eyes grow even more concerned as she simply pulled on Chiara’s arms and gently guided her up the stairs and all the way to her small apartment under the roof.

Perhaps under different circumstances, on a different day, Chiara would have been ashamed of the disarray, consisting of all her post-its and notebooks strewn across every available surface in her space. But as the saying went, today was not that day—and not those circumstances.

And what did it matter? Vi had been accepted into her sanctum sanctorum, where Chiara lived amongst constant alarms and reminders. One more glimpse inside wasn’t going to change Vi’s opinion of her.

Chiara smiled at her own thoughts chasing each other, even as Vi carefully deposited her on the cluttered sofa among several wedding magazines and swatches of paint that, months later, Chiara still hadn’t decided on, and hence her kitchen remained unpainted. She’d get to them. She didn’t cook all that much these days.

Before she could venture down that road of asking herself why and make her temples explode with more pain at straining to think, Vi was back with a fistful of pills and a warm cup of something that turned out to be chamomile tea.

There was chamomile tea in her cabinets?Another thought for another day. Chiara didn’t bother voicing it as she gently put the pills on her tongue one by one, sipping on the water Vi had seemed to produce out of nowhere and placed in her hand, cursing softly after each tablet made sure to get stuck in her throat. Chewing them was out of the question. Even the thought of them powdering under her teeth made her shudder, and she downed the rest of the bottle in one big chug before reaching for the tea mug.

“Thank you.”

Vi rolled her eyes, and Chiara couldn’t suppress a frown.

“It’s the polite thing to say, Vi. You are being nice to me. I’m appropriately grateful.”

“You were very nice to me yesterday, when you made sure I got home in one piece and slept through the night.” Vi gingerly sat down on the coffee table in front of her. The desire to rub her pained temples was strong, but she willed herself to finish whatever this conversation was going to lead them to.

“So this is a quid pro quo?”

Vi rolled her eyes again.

“Didn’t your mother teach you that if you do that too often, they’ll get stuck up there forever?”

As soon as she’d uttered the words, Chiara’s hand flew to her mouth, mortified by her lack of sensitivity and tact. “God, Vi, I’m so—”

Vi reached out, and shaking her head, tugged Chiara’s hand away from her face.

“No, neither my father nor my stepmother ever had to tell me that, because I’ve rarely allowed myself the gesture in their presence. That would have meant being grounded and losing whatever privileges I had left at the time. So I’m free to roll my eyes at you being silly. Now, tell me, how are you feeling?”

Chiara’s frown turned into a pout at Vi not even allowing her to apologize when she was being thoughtless.

“You’re so bossy.”

She sounded petulant and didn’t care that Vi was sitting there grinning at her lower lip sticking out. Chiara sighed and lifted a hand to the nape of her neck, kneading the taut muscles corded like ropes under her fingertips.

“I’ve been called worse, Chiara.” There was a smile in the corners of Vi’s mouth, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes, and Chiara felt compelled to tug on this thread of the conversation, even if she knew it wasn’t wise. Not after what she’d witnessed yesterday.

“Well, with a family like yours…”

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