Chapter 5 — A Month Before

Here is the thing Luca did not know, and it is the reason the night went the way it did.

A month before that banquet, I had stopped believing him.

For two years I had swallowed his mother’s cruelty — the endless criticism of how I dressed Fiona, what I fed her, how much I worked, even the way my little girl pronounced her words — because Luca always promised that the next gathering would be different, that it was a misunderstanding, that if I would just keep the peace, things would improve.

And for two years I had believed him, or made myself believe him, because believing him was easier than facing what his endless requests for my silence actually meant.