It all looked so bad, but in my heart, I knew the truth was going to prevail.
My husband, though, was having a hard time with not remembering. He didn’t speak much. The wheels were constantly turning in his head.
He pulled me close and wrapped his arms around me. He was always close, and sometimes, I got the feeling he was waiting for the moment the ground was going to open and swallow him whole. Like he was waiting for me to change my mind about trusting him.
I think what disturbed him the most was that, even if she had drugged him…the natural course of things could’ve still happened, and he felt his body wasn’t strong enough to turn her away. I’d seen the hunger in her eyes at the meeting. She was obsessed with my husband.
I refused to give life to the what-ifs. I could only concentrate on one breath at a time.
This breath purled out of my mouth like smoke. I set my sunglasses on top of my head and gazed out at the world around me as Scarlett finished her dance. She kissed her husband before holding up a finger at us. She was going to change.
We’d made plans to meet Scarlett and Brando and head to Bahnhofstrasse. We both wanted to do some Christmas shopping.
From what Rocco had told me, Bahnhofstrasse was considered one of the most expensive streets in the world, with shopping along it, not a traditional market like I’d heard aboutin other Swiss and German towns. Rocco said one day we’d visit however many I’d like.
The scent of roasting nuts and cinnamon, though, had been drifting in the air since we arrived in Zermatt. Whenever I thought of eating them, my mouth watered. I told Rocco this after we’d first arrived. Before I knew it, pounds of them had been delivered to the chalet. But I’d been locking myself away. It was time to get out.
My sister-in-law, and her husband by default, was more than happy about going when I mentioned we were.
We were close to the cause of the scent, and I reminded myself of a hound with the way my nose kept lifting toward the smell. Call it a hunch, but I knew it was going to feel different to hold the bag in my hand and eat from the direct source.
I expected Rocco to grin when I told him this to break the ice while we waited for Scarlett and Brando, but all he did was say, “Bene,” and kiss my hand.
Mindlessly, I caressed my husband’s warm hand. “It’s so beautiful here, Rocco,” I whispered.
“I am pleased you think so.” His voice was far away and curt. To the point. He was present with me, but not.
“What are you thinking?” I asked in Italian.
He answered in the same language, different dialect, and I didn’t understand. He must have realized it. He cleared his throat. “In theory, what my father did in Louisiana to the sheriff and his wife made sense to me. What he did for Margherita. However, I did not understand the motivation to this degree now.”
Our eyes connected, and he didn’t even blink.
He was telling me that he, too, would go to the lengths Luca did to have me avoid so much hurt. I didn’t even know what to say. I understood what he meant, like he said, in theory, butmaking the issue disappear without finding out the truth wasn’t going to solve anything or erase the hurt.
I cleared my throat. “Don’t ask me how I know this for sure, Rocco Fausti, but…everything she said was a lie.”
He turned me around so fast, if he hadn’t been holding me, I would’ve slipped. Snow drifted between our faces, and when he breathed out, he sent a gust of them in the air.
He searched my eyes, looking for answers that I couldn’t speak with my mouth—not without staking my truth on it.
“I told you,” I whispered. “I don’t have proof. Just a woman’s intuition.”
“You trust me this much.”
I nodded. “I’d put my head on the line for the truth in our love. You wouldn’t hurt me that way—not on purpose.”
He pulled me to him, and I breathed in his warmth, the scent of his cologne, and the smell of almonds, cinnamon and sugar coming from what I assumed was the street. When the smell of frozen rose petals, mixed with a cologne like my husband’s but different, seemed to drift in the air, I pulled back a little to see Scarlett and Brando making their way closer.
On the walk into town, since we were technically in Winkelmatten, which I was sad to report that I hadn’t even studied beyond the snow, Scarlett became truly animated, telling me all about the Christmas markets she’d been to over the years. She smiled at her husband, and her eyes glistened, like a woman newly in love, like a woman who had always been in love, as she told me about their honeymoon.
Their love had bloomed in winter.
Ours had bloomed in the summer.
The seasons we’d fallen in seemed to say a lot about who we were as couples, and how we responded to each other. Brando and Scarlett had a lot of fighting to do, and in the center of it,their love was protected from the cold of the world by their warm love.
Our love…it came later in our lives, and it was as warm as the sun above our heads on a hidden Mediterranean island. I wasn’t privy to the way Brando and Scarlett fought, but something about them gave me the impression that, when they did, they fought hard.
