The Woman in White

Maria went into the bedroom before she could hear anything else.

Sophia was asleep on her stomach, one knee tucked beneath her. Maria straightened the blanket and sat beside her, though there was nothing to do.

She had imagined Elena returning so many times that the possibility ought to have felt familiar. Instead it made the room strange. The little lamp, the cup on the bedside table, the cardigan Maria had left across a chair: all of them seemed like possessions she would soon be asked to gather.

Alessandro knocked on the open door.

"She wants to come tomorrow. I told her Sophia wouldn't be present for the first conversation."

Maria kept her hand on the blanket.

"What did she say?"

"That she has an explanation."

Of course she did. Elena had always been able to make an explanation sound like a wound.

"Would you prefer to see her alone?" Maria asked.

"Would you prefer not to see her?"

She finally looked at him.

"Those aren't the same question."

"I know. I'm asking yours first."

The consideration almost broke her composure.

"I need to hear what she says."

"Then you'll be there."

He remained in the doorway. Maria could sense his restraint, the distance he was choosing to keep because a sleeping child lay between them and the things neither had named.

"You can stay at breakfast tomorrow," he added.

"I usually do."

"Today you left when I sat down. Yesterday too."

Heat rose in her cheeks. She had thought herself discreet.

"I didn't want to intrude."

"I've never mistaken you for an intrusion."

After he left, Maria lay beside Sophia with her eyes open until dawn.

Elena arrived at eleven in a cream dress and a white coat. She was thirty, two years older than Maria, and almost exactly as beautiful as memory had insisted. Her hair fell in polished waves. She carried no overnight bag and no photograph of her daughter.

She stopped when she saw Alessandro.

"I thought you would never let me through the gate."

He did not approach her.

"You asked to explain."

Her eyes moved to Maria, and for a moment her expression faltered.

"Maria, look at you."

Maria wore a plain green dress. She had put on earrings, then removed them. Now she wished she had kept them, and hated herself for thinking about earrings at all.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

Elena put her bag on the table.

"I was frightened. Vittorio knew things about the foundation, and I found records I shouldn't have seen. I thought if I disappeared, he'd leave you alone."

"You could have called me."

"I couldn't risk someone tracing the call."

Maria thought of the photograph beneath the Palm Beach awning.

"For almost four years?"

Tears gathered in Elena's eyes. Once, Maria would have crossed the room to hold her. The old impulse still moved through her, and she felt sick with the effort of staying seated.

"I made mistakes," Elena said. "Richard offered protection. I thought I could build something stable and come back for her."

Alessandro's voice remained level.

"Why did you tell Maria I knew about the pregnancy?"

"I was angry with you. I didn't know what you'd do."

"You manufactured an answer from me."

"I didn't manufacture your voice."

His expression hardened.

Elena reached toward his hand. "You remember how things were between us. You frightened me sometimes."

Maria saw the words land. Alessandro did not pretend they were impossible. He had frightened her too. The difference was that Elena was using a truth to hold up something that did not fit around it.

"That doesn't explain the message," he said.

"I can't undo what I did in a panic. Please let me see my little girl."

Maria gripped her own wrist beneath the table.

They agreed to a brief meeting in the sunroom, with both Maria and Alessandro present. Rosa brought Sophia from the garden, where she had been planting sunflower seeds in paper cups.

Elena crouched, opening her arms.

"Sophia, darling, I'm your mother."

Sophia stopped beside Maria's knee.

"My mommy is here."

Elena's smile held, though Maria saw the effort.

"Maria looked after you for me. I knew she would take wonderful care of you."

Sophia looked up. Maria laid a hand against her back.

"Elena gave birth to you," she said gently. "You don't have to understand everything today. You can stay right here."

Elena produced a velvet box containing a gold bracelet.

"I brought you something special."

Sophia inspected it from a safe distance.

"Can I wear it in the dirt?"

"Perhaps we could clean your hands first."

"I was growing flowers."

"We'll find you a nicer dress too."

The yellow dress was clean, but the repaired hem had come loose again. Maria felt Alessandro's gaze turn toward her.

Sophia slipped her muddy fingers into Maria's hand.

"I like this one. Mommy fixed it."

The visit lasted seventeen minutes. Elena kissed the air near Sophia's cheek and promised a dollhouse. Sophia asked Rosa to show her whether the seeds had grown yet.

When the child left, Elena turned to Maria with a brittle laugh.

"You've made yourself indispensable."

"She's a little girl. She needs time."

"Of course she does."

Later, Elena found Maria alone near the guest stairs. Her tears had dried. Up close, her perfume was familiar enough to bring back evenings when they had shared takeaway food and talked about futures neither could afford.

"You have a lovely room," Elena said.

Maria did not answer.

"I'm grateful. I hope you understand that. But eventually she'll need her own family. You deserve to have a life too."

Maria could not tell which part hurt most: the assumption that her life had been waiting elsewhere, or the ease with which Elena separated Sophia from it.

"She is my life," she said.

Elena smiled with something close to pity.

"Then we should be careful about making this harder than it has to be."

That night Maria folded the spare clothes she had brought from the apartment. She put them in the suitcase without quite deciding to leave.

Alessandro found her kneeling beside it.

He looked at the folded cardigan, then at her face.

"If you're going somewhere, I would like you to tell me why."

"I don't want to make this difficult for Sophia."

"Then don't disappear from her room because Elena has entered mine."

Maria rose too quickly. "Has she?"

He went still.

Then he came closer, stopping within reach.

"She entered my office," he said quietly. "That is all."

Maria could not look away from him. The shame of having revealed herself was hot and immediate.

"You don't owe me that explanation."

"I wanted you to have it."

He took the cardigan from the suitcase and laid it across the chair where it had been before.

"Stay, Maria. Tomorrow morning, sit beside me."

For the first time, she let herself wonder whether he meant more than breakfast.