Page 92 of These Thin Lines

“I’d what? Leave? I did that once already. I’m here now. I have an entire life planned here. It’s laid out in detail in Renate’s accounting books and all over my post-its.”

That drew a smile, as she had hoped it would.

“Well, if your sticky notes are involved, it’s serious.”

“You are lucky I know you mean it the way you do, otherwise we’d be having words, Courtenay.”

Vi ran her hand down Chiara’s cooling back in a long caress, the mood shifting.

“Still, with everything that’s going on, I owe you the truth. I should have told you years ago. But I couldn’t. The gala was the last straw, I think. I hadn’t seen him in years. And I’ve kept his secrets for far too long—”

The buzzing of her phone interrupted, and Chiara tsked but didn’t get up. She hugged Vi tighter, signaling her to go on, both dreading and wishing for a resolution. But Vi remained quiet, the phone buzzing insistently again and again.

“I think you should probably get that. Whatever it is that demands your attention enough to bother you at 3 a.m. on a Saturday morning.”

Chiara had to smile at the words. At the contrast to what Frankie would have said. Her ex-wife would have wanted to know who it was. Her ex-wife would have demanded answers.

Vi did not ask who, nor did she seem particularly anxious about the call, lying back on the pillows, arms behind her head, small breasts distracting Chiara from her phone’s flashing screen. She had to smile at the role reversal from five years ago.

When she tore herself away from the view and answered, her brain was miles ahead of her heart. On the other end of the line, she heard the familiar sound of Arabella’s voice choosing her words with care, informing her that Renate had a heart attack and would Chiara please come to the hospital immediately since she had power-of-attorney and was needed to make some medical decisions.

As the phone fell out of her numb hand, Vi reached out to catch it and got up from the disarrayed bed.

A moment later, Chiara heard her speaking in low tones, but she could not for the life of her understand a word Vi was saying. Her heart was finally catching up with the news her brain had already processed, and now her lungs were so tight, she thought she would choke. Renate couldn’t be in a hospital. Renate, who was her family. Renate, who was her rock.

Suddenly, Vi appeared in her line of vision, sitting down on the floor in front of her—how had she ended up naked on the soft carpet herself?—and slowly, gently lifted her chin to meet her eyes.

“The driver will be here in twenty minutes, Chiara. We need to get dressed.”

* * *

The Citythat Never Sleeps looked disheveled and unkempt, tired and worried, and Chiara realized that, perhaps for the first time in her life, she had found her place, with the woman who held her hand in the car that she herself had arranged without a need for Chiara to even say a word. All she needed now was for her family to be okay, and then she could finally breathe again with a full chest.

25

IN A FARAWAY LAND OF BEDSIDE CONFESSIONS

Chiara Conti blinked at the lights speeding by, her eyes dry, lids scraping the irises like sandpaper. How different this ride was except for Vi’s hand holding hers, the one tether to this world, to this present, stayed steady and warm.

“How long? How long do you think?”

She wondered why she was asking this question when time had never meant anything to her. She herself hated being asked about this. Chiara knew she could never master it. Timeframes constricted her unlike anything else. It would take as long as it would take.

One street after another, one red light, one green light, they would eventually get there. Perhaps even quicker than she’d imagined. And that imagination of hers, tired and unmedicated, stretched and compressed time into weird, unknowable shapes.

She felt like a child.

Are we there yet? How about now?

Vi didn’t seem to hear her, and the steady beat of her pulse in her wrist under Chiara’s fingertips did what she needed it to do most—measure that unfathomable time for her.

Silence stretched again. Vi gently squeezed her fingers, and Chiara burrowed into her neck.

“Arabella called. I don’t know why it was her.”

She heard her own voice like a spectator in a theater observing from the wings. She didn’t bother wondering why she’d said it. She didn’t even care to hear the answer. Just something to say. How silly, how surreptitiously useless and yet such a crutch.

“I caught the phone when you dropped it, baby, and spoke to her.” Vi’s voice was matter of fact, and she again squeezed the hand she was holding reassuringly, as if Chiara completely missing everything that was going on around her was par for the course. Maybe it was. “As for why, well, they’ve been together for weeks now, Chiara.”

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