Chapter Ten: The Lake
Spring came slowly. The snow melted in dirty stages. By April, the gardens behind the house in Lake Forest were showing green. By May, Rosa was yelling at the gardener about the rose bushes again. By June, Isabella had her own law practice. A small office above a bakery on North Clark. Three clients. All hers. None of them Vescari business.
One night in late June, Isabella sat on the stone steps at the back of the house, looking at the lake.
It was one of those summer nights in Illinois that feel borrowed from somewhere else. Warm. Soft. Smelling of cut grass and old roses. The lake was flat. The light on the water was that low, slow gold that only happens for about nine minutes a night.
Lorenzo came out with two glasses of wine.
He sat down beside her. Not close. Not far.
He handed her a glass.
“You’re thinking,” he said.
“I’m always thinking.”
“You are thinking something in particular.”
“I’m thinking about my mother. She would not have liked any of this.”
“Probably not.”
“She would have been very polite to you. She was always polite. She would have made you her mole. She would have asked about your family. And then after you left, she would have turned to me and said—Isabella Cruz, I did not raise you for this.“
“What would you have said?”
“I would have said—Mama, you didn’t raise me for this. You raised me for something smaller. Something safer. And for thirty years, I was trying to build that. And when it broke, I did not know how to build it again. I needed someone to tell me I did not have to. I needed someone to tell me that the life I had been building was not the only life.“
Lorenzo was quiet.
“What would she have said?”
“I don’t know. She would have been quiet for a long time. Like my father was quiet. And then she would have said—Mija, I still do not like it. I still wish you were not doing it. But if you do it, you do it with your eyes open. You do it without lying to yourself.“
“And if the man ever makes you small—if he ever looks at you the way Angela Marchetti looked at you—you do not stay. You stay only if he looks at you the way a man looks at a woman he would die next to. And if he stops looking at you that way, mija, you leave before he notices.“
Lorenzo nodded slowly.
“That is a good rule,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I will try to not stop looking at you that way.”
“That is not something you can promise.”
“No. It isn’t. I know that. I will still try.”
“Okay.”
They drank their wine.
The gold left the water. The sky went purple, then blue, then dark. Somewhere in the house, Rosa was doing dishes. Somewhere in the driveway, Matteo was smoking the one cigarette he allowed himself each day.
After a while, Isabella said, “I think I want to try.”
“Try what?”
“The thing. The other room. The one you were going to let yourself find out about.”
He did not look at her. He looked at the lake.
“Isabella.”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“No.”
“Good. Being sure would be a lie.”
“Probably.”
“Okay. We will let ourselves find out.”
She put her head very carefully on his shoulder. It was the first time she had done it. His shoulder was warm. He was, she had learned, warmer than most people. She had always run cold. He had always run warm.
They balanced each other that way.
“Isabella.”
“Yes.”
“You saved my life. You know.”
“I did not.”
“You did. I was not going to die. That is not what I mean. But there is a kind of living that is only waiting. A man who has lost his wife and does not want to find another life. A man who runs a business he does not love anymore because he does not know what else to run. A man who eats dinner alone for four years.”
“I was that man, Isabella. I was going to be that man for a very long time. And I saw you on a sidewalk on a night in November. And I thought—there is a woman who is about to decide something. And I made a decision, too. I made it right there in the car. Before I even spoke to you.”
“I decided that I was going to try to be alive again. And I have been. Since the minute you sat in my car. I have been.”
She did not answer. She did not trust her voice.
“You did that,” he said. “You did not know you were doing it. But you did it.”
“You saved mine, too.”
“No. You saved yours. I only opened a door. You chose to walk through it. That was you. Do not let me take credit for that.”
“You opened the door. Doors are easy. The walking is hard.”
“Both are hard, Lorenzo.”
“Maybe.”
They sat on the stone steps for a long time.
A neighbor’s dog two houses over barked once at a rabbit and then gave up.
“One more thing,” Isabella said.
“All right.”
“I am not the queen of anything. No. I heard people say it once at a party in January. Somebody pointed at me and said—That is the queen. I almost laughed.”
“And I don’t want to be a queen. I don’t want to be the thing your brother thinks I am, or the thing Angela Marchetti thinks I am, or the thing Camille thinks I am. I don’t want to be a story. I want to be a woman.”
“I want to be a woman who is married to a man she is figuring out. I want to have a law practice above a bakery. I want to have dinner at my father’s house once a month. I want my husband to one day maybe learn to laugh out loud at the dinner table instead of just almost smiling at his wine glass.”
“I will work on the laugh.”
“Work on it.”
“I will work on it.”
“That is all I want, Lorenzo. I don’t need to be a queen. I had the crown on for one night. It was heavy. I don’t want to wear it every day.”
“Good. Then you will not.”
“Good.”
A little later, she stood up.
She held out her hand to him.
He took it. He let her pull him up. He was heavier than he looked. She had never noticed that about him before.
“Come inside,” she said. “It’s getting cold.”
“I thought you said I run warm.”
“I do. I run cold. It is my rule. Now come inside.”
They walked into the house.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
