Chapter 6

Seven days after I left the Valenti estate, I returned to Chicago with Victoria to complete the final division of assets. The door was opened by the longtime butler, who had served the Valenti family for more than twenty years. "Mrs. Valenti, you came back." He realized his mistake and lowered his head. I did not correct him. I sent Victoria and the attorneys to the study and continued through the main hall.

The estate was still standing, but small problems had spread everywhere. Gift boxes from the gala remained against the wall. Two wives of senior members were arguing over seating at a funeral, and the widows' fund had missed three households. Dominic had never seen these problems before because I had handled them before they reached him.

I found Dominic alone at the end of the dining table. The curtains were closed, his breakfast was cold, and the medicine I used to remind him to take sat beside his hand. He looked thinner than he had a week earlier. Hope entered his eyes when he saw me, then disappeared when he noticed the lawyers behind me.

"I got home at two this morning," he said. "The kitchen was closed, and every light was off. I sat here for a long time before I remembered that nobody was going to ask whether I had run into trouble."

I used to leave a light on, even when we had argued. Sometimes I kept soup warm. Sometimes I waited at the table with a book and asked whether he was all right when he came through the door. He had called it interference. Now he understood that someone had cared whether he came home alive.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Helena came down in a silk robe and pushed several renovation plans in front of Dominic. She wanted the room beside the master bedroom turned into a nursery, and she wanted to replace the furniture because the house still felt owned by another woman.

Dominic rubbed his forehead and said they could discuss it later. Helena's face changed at once. She said he always delayed, the baby would arrive soon, and she still had no official position. She was living in a house arranged by his former wife, and she wanted a life of her own.

A lieutenant entered with a list of death benefits from the docks. Information for several families was wrong, and Dominic asked who had always checked it. The lieutenant looked toward me and explained that Mrs. Valenti had reviewed every name before the payments were approved.

Helena pushed the papers away. "I am the finance director. I am not the estate manager. These household details are not my job." The dining room went quiet. Dominic looked at her and finally saw that the woman who had once claimed she wanted nothing now wanted a room, a title, and a new life on her terms.

After I signed the final papers, I left for the front entrance. Dominic followed me with the medicine bottle still in his hand and asked whether I had done all of those things because I was Mrs. Valenti.

"I did them because I loved you then." His fingers closed around the bottle. He finally understood that he had not lost a wife who knew how to care for him. He had lost the person who had always chosen to stand behind him.