Page 20 of Blood Orange Christmas
“And if we must?” I ask.
“Then we move early,” he says. “Before anyone else puts on their shoes.”
He says it like a plan and not a threat. I look at his profile and think about the father he could be if rooms like this didn’t come with doors that open the wrong way. He would be the one who kneels to tie shoes so the knot holds. He would be the one who teaches our son to say no and mean it. He would be the one who shows him how to give a thing back better than he found it. I know this. It hurts to know it.
A cooling pipe ticks in the wall. The house settles a little deeper on its foundations. Outside, a car rolls over gravel and continues without stopping. The dog in the courtyard coughs once and decides the night can handle itself. I tuck the shawl tighter around Marco and stand. My body is heavy in the right places—back, shoulders, hands. The good weight of a kitchen done forthe night. The bad weight of being seen by people who collect knowledge for sport.
At the door, I pause. “Dante,” I say. “If your cousin with the questions comes back tomorrow, I don’t want him on my side of the door.”
“He isn’t my cousin,” he says. “And he won’t.”
“Someone else will,” I say.
He nods once. “And they’ll find the door shut.”
I leave him with the coals and my son with the blanket and walk the corridor back to the small room that smells like cedar and clean sheets. I wash my hands in the sink even though they’re already clean. I watch the water run clear. I set out clothes for morning that smell like flour and lemon. I text myself a list—baccalà, clams, pastry dough, ice, more towels—and add one thing I can’t buy.
Be boring. Be invisible.
The wind lifts outside and presses a palm against the window like a friend checking if I’m awake. I climb into bed and listen to the house breathe and think about the two voices in the hall, soft as dust.
The cook sees too much.
Make sure she sees less.
9
SERENA
“The cook sees too much.”
“Make sure she sees less.”
The words are still in my head when I wake. They float up before the sunlight does, before the radiators tick, before Marco’s small feet hit the cold floor and carry him to my bed so he can whisper, “Mamma, the castle is calling.” He means the fountain. He means the courtyard where the dog has decided we belong.
I dress us both in warm layers and take him down. The air outside is thin and clean. It smells like wet stone and olives. Two guards keep their distance at the edge of the courtyard, hands in their coats, pretending the morning belongs only to us. I let it, because Marco runs with that open, serious joy he gets when he decides a place is his. He stands on the low wall and throws his arms wide to greet the water. The fountain throws light back at him like applause.
“Can we explore?” he asks, bouncing a little on his toes.
“We can, as long as we’re polite to old rooms,” I say, taking his hand. “Old rooms remember everything.”
We start with the long east corridor. He is the one who finds the hallway painted with Sicilian saints—the faces are simple and kind, hands raised in blessing or in warning, robes edged with symbols that look like lemon leaves and little fishes. Marco stops at each one and says hello like he has all day. A staffer passing with linens pauses to see us, then smiles and moves on. The saints keep watching. I count the niches between the paintings, the odd gaps where a door might have been.
We turn left and the sound of our steps changes—tile to wood—leading us into a room full of gramophones that look like brass flowers. Some are polished, some are still. A green one sits on a low table with a stack of records beside it. Marco slides a record partway out of its sleeve and freezes, watching me for a rule I haven’t said yet.
“Ask first,” I tell him. “Then we’ll hear a song.”
He asks the empty air with both hands held up like he’s catching a ball. I look around for staff. No one answers, so I gently set the record on the turntable. The gramophone’s crank is hidden under a hinged panel. It turns with a tired little groan, then the needle finds the groove and a tenor voice climbs out of dust, soft and sure. Marco laughs like music is a trick and I clap once so he knows it’s allowed to be wonderful. We listen to half the song, then I ease the needle back so the record sleeps. The guards outside the door have their heads tipped in, but they pretend they heard nothing.
Farther on, beyond a narrow door that sticks before it gives, there’s a butler’s pantry the size of a small train platform. Shelves run to the ceiling. Drawers line the walls like organ keys.Marco opens one and gasps. Inside, cutlery is laid in velvet, forks with thin-necked tines, bone-handled knives, spoons with a little weight to them. Engraved initials. A set painted with tiny lemons that makes him shout, “For us!”
“We’ll ask,” I say, but I already see the place at the long table where a lemon-handled spoon would shine.
While he makes sure each drawer slides and each velvet bed holds its treasure, I walk the edges. There’s a seam in the paneling that doesn’t sit right. A cooling vent that breathes to a room that shouldn’t be here. A service bell that rings to a wall and not a door. I test a section of shelves with my palm and feel a hollow behind it. Not a trick of old wood—space where space shouldn’t be.
“Secret door?” Marco whispers, eyes huge, on tiptoe to press the panel too.
“Maybe,” I say. “This is an old house. It was built to keep things moving without being seen.”
