‘I was a neglected wife,’ she bit back. ‘Why do you think I left you? To pretend otherwise is demeaning—’
‘You’re here this weekend so my grandfather can spend what is likely to be his last birthday on this earth believing everything is fine between us,’ he interrupted.
‘We’re not going to do that by pretending that you’ve suddenly turned into a model husband, are we? Your grandfather isn’t stupid—none of your family are, and they’re not going to believe a leopard can change its spots. I visited your family on my own and made excuses for you for over a year before I left and I’ve been doing the same for the last four months and they have been none the wiser about the state of our marriage. When we finally come clean that we’ve separated, the only surprise will be that it’s taken me so long to see sense.’
Livia knew she was baiting him but she didn’t care. She wanted him to argue with her. She’d always wanted him to argue back but he never did. It was a circle that had only grown more vicious as their marriage limped on; her shouting, him clamming up.
True to form, Massimo’s mouth clamped into a straight line. He pushed his chair back roughly and got to his feet but before he could stride away as she fully expected him to do, he turned back around and glowered at her. ‘Unless you want a fight over any divorce settlement, I suggest you stick to the plan and stop putting doubts about our marriage in my family’s head. I don’t care what my parents or sister think but I will not have my grandfather having doubts about us.’
‘If you want a fight over the settlement then I’ll give you a fight,’ she said, outraged at his threat, ‘but I am sticking to the plan! You’ve neglected your family for so long that they think it’s normal that you neglect your wife too.’
‘I’m not having this argument again.’
She laughed bitterly. Her hands were shaking. ‘We never argued about it. Whenever I tried to tell you how unhappy I was, you walked away from me. You never wanted to hear it.’
‘You were like a stuck record.’ He made crablike pinching motions with his hands. ‘I’m bored, Massimo,’ he mimicked. ‘I’m lonely, Massimo. Why do you work such long hours, Massimo?’ He dropped his hands and expelled his own bitter laugh. ‘See? I did listen. Maybe if you’d ever paused for breath between complaints I might have felt more incentivised to come home earlier each night.’
‘I only complained because you work such stupid hours!’
His eyes were cold. ‘I didn’t force you to move to America. I didn’t force you to marry me. You knew the kind of man I was before we married but you thought you could change me. Instead of solving your problems for yourself you sat around the house wallowing and complaining and expecting me to fix everything for you.’
‘I never wallowed!’ she said, outraged. Of all the things he’d just accused her of, for some reason that was the one that immediately bit the hardest. ‘And as if I would have expected you to fix anything—you aren’t capable of fixing anything to do with the human heart. You’ve spent so much time with your machines and gadgets that your heart has turned to metal.’
He took the three steps needed to smile cruelly down at her. ‘You did nothing but wallow. And sulk. And complain. For the first few weeks after you left I thought I’d gone deaf.’
And then his smile turned into a grimace as he turned on his heel and, parting shot delivered, strode off leaving Livia standing there feeling as if he’d just ripped her heart out.
MASSIMO LOCKED THE bathroom door. He didn’t trust Livia not to barge in.
He’d expected her to follow him to the chalet. Every step had been taken with an ear braced for a fresh verbal assault.
But the assault never came.
He turned the shower on and closed his eyes to the hot water spraying over his head.
Livia’s defiant yet stricken face played in his retinas.
Guilt fisted his guts. He’d been cruel. The words had spilled out of him as if a snake had taken possession of his tongue.
Being here…with Livia, with his family, seeing how close to death his grandfather really was…it was all too much.
Hearing accusations of neglectful behaviour towards those he loved had driven like a knife in his heart.
He’d done his best for his family. They might not see him as much as they would like but he made up for his lack of presence in other ways.
And he’d done his best in his marriage. That his best did not live up to his wife’s exacting standards was not his fault. Neglect seemed to suggest that she was a child who needed taking care of when they both knew Livia was more than capable of taking care of herself. This was the woman who’d survived the Secondigliano without being seduced by its violent glamour. This was the woman who’d discovered an affinity for nursing when the local doctor the neighbourhood gangsters visited to fix their gangland wounds recognised her coolness under pressure when one of her cousins got shot in the leg. From the age of fourteen Livia had been paid a flat fee of fifty euros a time to assist the doctor whenever required. Like Massimo, she’d stashed it away. Unlike Massimo, who’d saved his money in a box in his bedroom, never having to worry about his family stealing it from him, she’d kept her cash in a waterproof container under the vase in her father’s grave. As she was the only mourner to place flowers on the grave, it was the only safe place she had for it.
She’d refused to be sucked into a life of crime. The only vice she’d picked up in her years where drugs were cheap and plentiful was cigarette smoking, which she’d quit when she’d achieved the grades needed to study nursing in Rome and taken all her cash and left the life behind her. She was as tough as nails. To suggest she needed caring for was laughable.
Finished showering, he rubbed his body with a towel then wrapped it around his waist. Bracing himself, he unlocked the door and stepped into the bedroom.
He’d been right to brace himself. Livia was sitting on the end of the bed waiting for him. But the fury he expected to be met with was nowhere to be seen. Her eyes, when he met them, were sad. The smudge of mascara was still visible.
After a moment’s silence that felt strangely melancholic, she said, ‘I don’t want it to be like this.’ It was the quietest he’d ever heard her speak.
He ran a hand through his damp hair and grimaced. ‘I thought you wanted me to argue with you. Isn’t that what you’ve always said?’
‘Arguing’s healthy, but this…?’ Her shoulders and chest rose before slumping sharply, her gaze falling to the floor. ‘I don’t want us to be cruel to each other. I knew things would be difficult this weekend but…’ Her voice trailed away before she slowly raised her head to meet his gaze. There was a sheen in her eyes that made his heart clench. ‘This is much harder than I thought it would be.’
Massimo pressed his back against the bathroom door and closed his eyes. ‘It’s harder than I thought it would be too.’
‘It is?’
He
