Page 93 of Just for a Taste

She forced a toothy smile that looked like it pained her. “I’ll go make you a plate as well.”

“It’s fine!” I said quickly. “We can share!”

“No, please do, Lucia,” Zeno replied, taking a seat beside me. “I don’t want to eat any of Cora’s. She isn’t well yet.”

Lucia bowed so deeply and shakily, I thought she would fall over. Then, with that same terrified grin, she replied, “Yes, sir!”

She skittered away, leaving me alone with the person I loved most.

“Now then, Cora,” Zeno purred, clasping my hand. “What shall we do today?”

“I want to go back to sleep for now,” I whispered, staring down at my food. “I’m so exhausted. Maybe after that we can just relax?”

Zeno cupped my face in his hand and tilted my head up. The rage in his eyes melted away immediately. He looked at me with the sweetest of smiles, with utter love and adoration. With eyes that worshiped me.

“Of course,mia passerotta. The world is ours. Not another soul matters.”

Chapter 51: Il mio tesoro

For the next week, I didn’t leave the bedroom on account of being “sick.” In truth, I felt perfectly fine—better than I had in months, in fact. But the entire household whispered about me as though I were a hospice patient. I had meals in bed, tea in bed, showers in the small bathroom attached, books and music curated to my desire. The finches were even trained to hop into travel cages to greet me.

It was someone’s will keeping me in those walls within walls. Someone had decided that I would isolate myself for three days, that the outside world would cease to exist. I did not know if this idea was Zeno’s or my own, nor which scenario would have been worse.

Just as I had awoken three days ago with the resolve to remain in bed, I awoke on the fourth intent to spend some of the day outdoors.

I had faded in and out of sleep, with Zeno at my side on occasion and the bed vacant on others. The final time I sat up, he was not there. A meal of some sort—I wasn’t certain if it was breakfast, lunch, or dinner—sat on a tray on the bedside table. Some sort of flaky pastry, warm and still steaming, paired with a creamy soup.

I had come to know most of the dishes served in the abbey. There was plenty of variety, of course, yet all the food was in the form of rustic Sicilian dishes I had researched before my first interview. Signora Carbone was fond of following the tradition of the land. Something about this dish, meanwhile, seemed vaguely French. I frowned and mentally went through my past few meals.

How hadn’t I noticed it before? Caprese salad, minestrone, and ribollita. They were all mainland Italian, or even outright foreign.

I tried in vain to parse the significance of this for a few minutes but gave up. My food and the bed were now cold and equally unappealing, so I abandoned them both.

Without a window or clock, the time of day was indiscernible as I stepped out into the hallway. The floor felt like ice beneath my feet, and the house had that strange, ethereal stillness that felt nocturnal. But as I peered into my old bedroom and saw light pouring through a gap in the curtains, my suspicions were confirmed to be wrong. It was simply an unusually still afternoon, much like the one during which I had seen Leonore.

But even on that day, there had seemed to be some sort of life in the abbey, with Signora Carbone and Lucia moving around in the background like mice, attending to the unforeseen machinations of the house.

I hobbled into the room, my breath eluding me. The air was heavy, full of my anticipation and something else entirely—a musty scent that was alien to this room, yet one which had been a close friend of mine for many years.

I ran my finger across the top of a bookshelf and found a fine, gritty layer on my fingertip. Dust. Something a conservatrix would have never permitted, even in a vacant suite. Signorina Carbone made Lucia clean the suite daily, and this degree of dust, though slight, did not accumulate with a single missed cleaning.

I slammed the window into its sill and yanked aside the curtains, which tore with a sickening sound and fell, limp, onto the ground. The room, now fully illuminated in many senses, was a wreck. The blanket and pillows had been scattered across the floor, every drawer thrown open and ravaged. Even the crosses had been torn from the wall.

“Lucia?” I called, as though she would be in the other room. “Signora?”

No reply, of course. I staggered out of the room, leaving the door ajar. The second it hit me, my heart raced, a terrible drum beating accelerando as all the clues unfolded.

When was the last time I had seen either of them? When had I last eaten the sort of food they cooked? When had my bedroom last been cleaned?

Badump-badump-badump-badump.Louder and faster my heart beat, the tiny vessels behind my eyes and within my ears visibly and audibly pulsating. Just as the tempo reached allegro, I became faintly aware of a song behind the drum—the gentle, steady first movement of “Moonlight Sonata,” played with the emotive yet skillful touch of Zeno’s fingers.

Vision darkening, I relied on the melody itself to guide me to our bedroom.

It took everything within me not to collapse back into the bed and allow myself to be lulled back to sleep by the music, to instead push beyond my sanctum and into Zeno’s. Through a haze, I could see him at the bench, head tossed back and eyes closed in a look of utter peace.

Anger swelled in me, rage at being unable to feel so calm myself.

I exhaled shakily, and the sonata seized midmeasure. “Ah, Cora,” Zeno said, glancing back at me. “What’s the ma—”

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