I Came Out Of Prison To Find My Husband Having A Wedding To Another Woman

The prosecutor didn't come closer. He just stood at the edge of the lawn, hands in his pockets, like a man who'd bought a ticket to a show.

Dante didn't take his eyes off him.

"Marco. Keep him out there."

Then his fingers clamped around my wrist, and he pulled me through the French doors.

Bianca's voice chased us down the hall. "Dante? *Dante!*"

He didn't turn around.

The study door slammed behind us. Same leather chairs. Same whiskey on the cart. My photo used to sit on the corner of his desk. Now there was a crystal paperweight shaped like a heart.

He let go of my wrist and dragged both hands through his hair.

"What the hell are you doing, Rhea?"

"Coming home."

"You don't walk into my house in front of sixty people and—"

"*Your* house?" I rubbed the red marks his fingers had left. "I signed the mortgage too. Or did that get lost with my letters?"

He poured a drink. Didn't offer me one.

"You need to calm down."

"I'm calm. I've been calm for three years. You learn calm when the woman in the next bunk tries to steal your shoes."

He drank half the glass in one swallow.

"Tell me something," I said. "Does Bianca know she's the one who pulled the trigger? Or did you rewrite that for her too?"

The glass stopped halfway to his mouth.

"Keep your voice down."

"Why? Afraid your bride will hear?"

"Rhea."

"She was drunk, Dante. She grabbed your gun off the crate because that guy called her a whore. I was standing right there. I watched her do it."

His jaw worked side to side. He set the glass on the desk. Very gently, like it might go off.

"I know what happened."

"Then say it."

"It doesn't matter now."

"Say it."

He turned his back on me and stared out the window, at the white chairs, at his guests whispering into their champagne.

"Bianca shot him," he said. "Happy?"

I wasn't. I thought I would be. Instead my chest felt hollow, like someone had scooped it out with a spoon.

"You remember what you told me that night?" I asked.

He didn't answer.

"You said Bianca's father would talk. You said the Russos weren't family, they'd flip the second the cops leaned on them. You said only a wife could take it. 'Nobody squeals on a Moretti wife, baby. It shuts everybody up.'"

"It worked, didn't it?" He spun around. "Nobody talked. The Calabreses backed off. The family held together."

"And I held the bag."

"I kept you safe in there. You think nobody touched you by accident? I paid for that."

"You paid." I laughed, short and dry. "You said you'd come every Sunday. Every single week, you swore it. You know how many Sundays I sat in that visiting room with my hair done?"

"Rhea—"

"A hundred and fifty-six. I counted. I fixed my hair with a plastic fork."

His face shifted. For one second, he looked like the man who used to braid my hair badly on Saturday mornings.

Then it closed again.

"I couldn't be seen there. The feds were watching me. If I showed up, it looked like guilt."

"So you sent nobody. Not a lawyer, not a card. Not your mother."

"My mother died last spring."

That stopped me cold.

"Nobody told me."

"Would it have helped?"

I stared at him. Really stared. The new watch. The gray coming in at his temples. The wedding band, not mine, sitting fresh on the desk beside the whiskey, waiting to go on.

"What do you want from me, Dante?"

He exhaled, like he'd been waiting for that question. Like this part was rehearsed.

"I need you to stay somewhere else for a while."

"Excuse me?"

"The apartment on Mulberry. It's furnished. I'll have Marco bring the keys tonight."

"You're kicking me out of my own home."

"I'm asking you to give it time." He stepped closer and lowered his voice. "Bianca's pregnant."

The word hung there.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry.

I smiled.

"Congratulations."

He blinked, thrown. "Rhea, I'm serious. The doctor says she can't have stress. Seeing you here, it'll upset her. If anything happens to that baby—"

"Then what? You'll find someone else to take the blame?"

His nostrils flared. "That's not fair."

"Fair." I tasted the word. "Okay. Let me get my things."

"I'll have someone pack—"

"No." I was already at the door. "I'll do it myself. I'd hate to stress anyone."

---

The stairs creaked on the fourth step. That hadn't changed.

Everything else had.

The hallway used to be lined with our photos. Our wedding in Amalfi. Me laughing on his shoulders at Coney Island. Our first Christmas, both of us in ugly sweaters his mother knitted.

Now the walls were bare. Pale squares on the paint where the frames used to hang.

I pushed open our bedroom door.

The bedspread was new. Blush pink. I'd never owned anything blush pink in my life.

I crossed to the closet and yanked it open.

Empty.

No, not empty. Full of someone else. Lace robes. Cream sweaters. A row of tiny heels in sizes I could never squeeze into.

I checked the dresser. The drawers. The cedar chest at the foot of the bed where I kept my grandmother's quilt.

Nothing of mine. Not one sock.

The housekeeper had followed me up. She hovered in the doorway, wringing a dish towel.

"Where are my clothes?" I asked.

She wouldn't meet my eyes. "Ms. Russo had them taken out. Last year."

"Taken where?"

"Donation. Some of it… the trash."

"My grandmother's quilt?"

She swallowed. "I'm sorry, ma'am. I just started in June."

I nodded. Funny how calm my voice sounded. "Thank you. You can go."

She fled.

I turned toward the bed. My side. The left side, closest to the window, because I liked to wake up with the sun.

There was a silver frame on the nightstand.

Bianca, in profile, in a white slip dress. Both hands cupped under a round little belly. Soft lighting, flowers in her hair. The kind of photo people pay a lot of money for.

I picked it up.

The frame was mine. I'd bought it in Florence on our honeymoon. It used to hold a picture of Dante kissing me on the Ponte Vecchio.

I turned it over.

On the back, in Dante's slanted handwriting:

*My girls. Six months. I'll protect you both with everything I have.*

Six months.

I counted backward, the way I'd counted everything in Bedford Hills.

Then I set the frame down very carefully, face up, exactly where she'd left it.

Because the date written in the corner wasn't six months ago.

It was the week of my sentencing.