The Last Promise (27 page)

“I’m going now.”

“Where?” he asked without taking his eyes from the paper.

“I’m taking Alessio into Florence for school clothes.”

“Do you need anything?”

“No.” He lowered the paper. “Thank you. What time will you be home?”

“I’ll be back around dinnertime. I have dinner all made; I just need to heat it up when I get back.”

“Okay. Shut my door on the way out.”

He went back to his paper. Fifteen minutes later Luca knocked on Maurizio’s door, then pushed it open. “
Ciao,
Maurizio.”

Maurizio looked up.

“
Ciao,
Luca. What’s going on?”

“I have the report from the lab.” He stepped into the den and handed the papers to Maurizio. Maurizio studied them, then looked up. “We did well. Almost twenty-five percent premium. Five percent better than last year.”

“Our total volume is nearly one hundred and thirty tons. That is five tons more than the last harvest.”

“I’ll drink to that.” He handed back the papers. “Anything else?”

“I just heard from Steinco. The new bottling machine will be delivered tomorrow.”

“Very good. What time?”

“In the morning.”

“Call me when they arrive with it. I’ll come down and meet them with you.”

Luca walked away but lingered near the door. His brow furrowed. “Maurizio, I have a concern.”

“You trust me to look over your things while you are gone.”

“I trust you implicitly.”

He swayed nervously from foot to foot. “This American, he is family of Eliana’s?”

“No, he’s only a tenant. Why?”

“Perhaps she just misses her country.”

“What are you saying?”

“He is often with her.”

Maurizio tensed. “How often?”

“Maurizio, Eliana is a friend. I don’t mean to make something of nothing.”

“Just tell me what you know.”

“The night of the
vendemmia
, when Alessio had the asthma attack . . .”

“Yes, when Eliana was gone . . .” His face reddened.

“She was with him?”

“Yes.”

Maurizio was quiet, his mind sorting through the evening. “What else do you know?”

Luca was breathing heavy. He was now wondering if he had done the right thing. “Last week I walked in on them . . .”

The blood drained from Maurizio’s face. “In bed?”

“No, no. Eliana was painting him.”

“She’s painting his picture?”

“. . . and they were kissing.”

Maurizio looked straight ahead, emotionless, but his thoughts grew both angry and panicked.

“Thank you, Luca. You are a loyal friend.”

“I hope so, Maurizio. To you and Eliana.”

He walked away, leaving Maurizio alone with his jealousy. Maurizio’s imagination raged, producing a vivid cinema of his wife and her lover’s liaisons—their touching, kissing and lovemaking, their whispered plotting of betrayal—and his imaginings became his reality. He had to know everything about their affair.

He climbed the stairs to Eliana’s studio and saw the portrait for himself, and it validated every thought he had. He considered putting his foot through the picture but restrained himself: there were answers to be had first.

He went to their bedroom and foraged through Eliana’s drawers for letters, jewelry, new lingerie—any clues of their relationship. He found nothing but a necklace that he vaguely remembered giving to her himself. He went to her computer and pulled up her e-mail, but found it password protected. He tried for nearly an hour guessing at what she might have used as a password, but without success.

Then his rage turned toward his enemy. He wanted to know more about Ross Story. Still on the Internet, he went to the Minneapolis phone book and found nothing. Then he went to the Minneapolis public records and input Ross’s name. To his surprise not one entry, but hundreds, came up. He read a dozen or more of the entries, read them until he understood, and then he printed some of them. The more he read, the more his sense of power grew. He had discovered what Eliana had failed to—he knew why Ross Story had left America and what role his fiancée had played in his leaving. He alone knew why Ross Story had come to Italy.

—Italian Proverb

 

 

 

 

 

“S
orry I’m late,” Eliana said, walking into the house, her arms full of boxes. “I had to see Anna off at the train station and the traffic downtown was
brutto
.”

Maurizio looked over at her from the living room couch, his expression cold and hard.

“I’ll get dinner right on, honey. Alessio, go get into your pajamas.”

Avoiding Maurizio’s glare, she set the packages down near her laundry room then retrieved the rest of the packages from the car. Then she went to the kitchen and heated everything up. She guessed that Maurizio was angry at her because he had to wait for his supper. It was a pet peeve of his that particularly annoyed Eliana since he never gave a second thought to being late for dinner himself.

Within fifteen minutes Eliana called everyone to dinner. She brought out a steaming dish of tortellini with basil and cooked ham, a second plate of chicken cacciatore, and an arugula salad with pears and pine nuts. Alessio came down first, then Maurizio. Peculiarly he brought his briefcase to the table.

They ate mostly in silence. Maurizio would not look at her, his anger simmering beneath a thin veneer of control.

The tension at the table was thick and nobody spoke until Maurizio asked Alessio gruffly,
“Come va la scuola?” How is school?

Alessio looked at his father blankly. “I don’t have school.”

“School doesn’t start for another two weeks,” Eliana said.

Maurizio said nothing but went back to eating.

Alessio asked, “May I be excused?”

“Yes,” Maurizio said.

“It’s time for bed,” Eliana said. “And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

“Can I read in bed?”

“Yes you
may
. For a little while.”

Alessio left the table, leaving the two of them alone. After a few minutes Eliana tried to make peace. “I’m sorry I was late with dinner. I didn’t mean to be. I thought I would be back earlier.”

“Where were you?”

“I told you. I was shopping for school clothes with Alessio. And I had to drop Anna off at the station.”

His gaze darkened. “Really?”

“What does that mean?”

Maurizio pushed back a little in his chair. “You were right, I know too little about how you spend your time. Or with
whom
.” There was a bend in his last sentence that disturbed her. “Tell me about that portrait you are working on. The one of the man.”

“You went in my studio?”

“The man in your picture looks just like our tenant, the American.” Maurizio’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been seeing him?”

Eliana didn’t answer. She knew Maurizio. This was his way, asking questions he already knew the answer to, coaxing you into a trap until you had sealed off all your escape routes.

“Or I should say
former
tenant. I’ll be kicking him out when he returns.”

Eliana just stared at him. Her throat was dry.

“Do you want to know why?”

“No.”

“Because you already know why, don’t you?” He pushed back in his chair.

“Well, you should be glad he’s gone,
amore
. I did a little research. Ross Story is a murderer.”

Eliana looked at him blankly.

“You don’t believe me.
E vero, amore.
”
It’s true, love.
“He killed his own fiancée.” He reached down, extracting papers from his briefcase. He set them on the table in front of her. She looked down at them. There were six sheets in all, newspaper articles printed off the Internet. She lifted the first article to read.

MINNESOTA ADMAN MURDERS FIANCÉE.

Below the headline was a picture of Ross. His hair was shorter then, he was younger, fresher in face, but it was definitely him.

Eliana looked at the other articles, reading the headlines and photo captions, and scanning the stories in disbelief.

MINNEAPOLIS ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE CHARGED IN FIANCÉE’S MURDER.

JURY CONVICTS ADMAN OF FIANCÉE’S MURDER.

FAMILY FILES CIVIL SUIT AGAINST DAUGHTER’S MURDERER.

The headline on an article from a Minneapolis advertising publication read: END OF STORY—THE FALL OF RISING AD STAR ROSS STORY. The photograph showed Ross in happier days, clad in a tuxedo, accepting an advertising award.

Eliana read the articles as numbness spread through her. As much as her heart had already suffered, it was as if a sledgehammer had come down to finish it off.

Maurizio watched as she read. When she finished she looked up at him speechless.

“You should choose your boyfriends a little more carefully. Especially those you trust with our son. If you as much as talk to him again, I will see to it that you pay.”

For a moment Eliana was in too much shock to speak.

“Where is the American now?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

His eyes narrowed in distrust.

“Honestly, I don’t know.”

“When is he coming back?”

“I don’t know.”

He leaned toward her, his face only six inches from hers. “When he returns you will not see him. You will not speak to him. Do you understand?”

She was trembling. “Yes.”

He pulled down on the skin below one eye. “I will be watching.” He stood. “Everyone at Rendola will be watching.” He walked from the room. When he was gone, Eliana looked again at the newspaper articles. She wanted them to change. It couldn’t be him. The Ross Story she knew wasn’t capable of this. She looked at the pictures until they made her ill and she could not look at them anymore. She slowly cleared the table. Then she went into the bathroom and threw up. She kneeled in front of the toilet holding her head. It was too much at one time. How could he not have told her?

—Italian Proverb

 

 

 

 

 

M
aurizio was alone in the courtyard when Ross entered. It was late at night and the sound of his scooter had alerted Maurizio to his return. Maurizio was leaning against the wall next to his apartment’s doorwell, the smoke from his cigarette rising, curling in the air above him. Ross waved to him.

“
Ciao,
Maurizio.”

Maurizio only glared at him as he lifted his cigarette again. From his hateful expression Ross deduced that he knew about Eliana and him. He wondered if Eliana, under the pressure of her own guilt, had confessed to him her feelings. The hypocrisy of it angered him. It would be like confessing a speeding ticket to a formula race car driver.