Chapter Thirty Six
Elena
I take the guest room closest to Luca’s because it feels safest. It’s quiet, the bed is made too neatly, and there’s nothing in here that belongs to anyone. Blank slate. I stand in the center and start sketching with my hands like I can will it into something else.
Bed gets taken out. Crib on the left wall under the window. Not the fussy kind with spindles. Just clean lines, solid wood. A dresser that doubles as a changing table on the right, topped with a mat and a stack of wipes in a basket. Blackout curtains because sleep is survival.
A small bookcase low to the floor. A glider that doesn’t squeak. Soft rug I can lie on for baby’s tummy time. Neutral walls, then color in the textiles—sage and cream, maybe a little rust. Nothing too sweet or sickly.
A night light that won’t sear my retinas at 3:00 a.m.
I list it all in my head like evidence for a trial. It helps steady me.
I don’t know where I’ll be when this baby needs a crib. I don’t know if I’ll still be here or back in my apartment once the threats mutate into whatever comes next.
But if I pretend this is the room, my mind stops tumbling from one panicked thought to the next.
There’s a small table in front of the empty fireplace. I sit and draw a box in my notebook and label it: Musts. Diapers. Onesies. Thermometer. A sling. A stroller that I can’t even use because I can’t take my baby on a damn walk outside the gates of the property.
Bottles, if I try to nurse and fail. Backup plans.
Luca has people packing up my apartment. They’re packing everything, but I gave him the must-haves. My mother’s recipe box and pictures. That’s all I care about. Everything else can burn for all I care.
But I need her index cards. Bent at the corners, her handwriting looping. Sunday sauce. Easter ricotta pie. The almond cookies she made when I graduated from middle school to high school.
She wasn’t there when I graduated high school.
It’s ridiculous how much a box of recipes I can’t make means to me. They could forget all of my clothes. But if they forget those cards, I’ll lose it.
I’m drawing little squares for dresser drawers when the door taps once and swings in.
Caterina leans on the frame. Even in ripped jeans and a casual white shirt, she still somehow looks exactly like a person who grew up in rooms like this. She takes me in—my notebook, the empty bed, the bare walls.
“Working?” she asks.
“Planning,” I say. “It’s either this or obsess.”
“Planning wins,” she says, and steps inside.
I brace for pity or coldness. I get neither.
“I figured I’d hate you,” she starts, frank as a slap. She shrugs when my brows go up.
“Well. You were trying to put my father back in prison.”
“I was,” I say. No apology. No excuse.
“Right.” She nods like she appreciates that I’m not softening it. “But then I saw that damn ultrasound, and I saw the way he looked at you.”
She gives a quick flick of her hand. “So. I adjusted.”
I let out my breath on a wry laugh. “That easy?”
“Not easy,” she says. “Just simple.” She gestures to the notebook. “What’s that?”
“List of what a baby needs. What I might need.” I look down and laugh once. “I have no idea.”
“Good list,” she says, coming closer. She doesn’t sit yet. She scans the room like I did and then points to the corner. “Glider there. You’ll want an outlet for your phone behind it. Put a little table within reach for water. You’ll think you don’t need it, and then you’ll be trapped under eight pounds of sleeping tyrant and dying of thirst.”
