Chapter 10 - The Camellia Blooms
July in the Hudson Valley was ninety-two degrees in the shade.
The cicadas were screaming in the crowns of the sugar maples, their metallic rattle rising and falling with the shimmering heat that rose off the blacktop of Route 9D. Down on the river, the sailboats were stalled in the dead calm between Beacon and Cold Spring, their white canvas limp against the green water.
In the kitchen of the Marquetti estate, the tall sash windows were thrown wide, letting in the smell of cut grass, river mud, and the heavy, sweet scent of garden roses that had climbed eight feet up the southern trellis.
Rosalie sat at the head of the long oak table, shelling early peas into an enamel basin, the pods cracking with a steady, hollow *snap-snap-snap*.
The screen door swung open.
Angela walked in from the terrace. She was wearing a white sleeveless linen dress that ended just below her knees, her shoulders bare to the afternoon sun, her skin a rich, golden honey from three weeks of working in the orchard. Her hair was pinned up with two carved tortoiseshell combs, and around her neck hung a thin gold chain with a small, flat emerald that Silvano had brought back from a three-day trip to Montreal in May.
There were no long sleeves.
There was no tape on her wrists; there was no cheap drugstore ointment on the pantry shelf; there was no cardboard inside the soles of her soft leather sandals.
She set a flat wooden basket of fresh mint on the counter beside the sink.
"The bees are thick down by the spring," she said, wiping her brow with the back of her wrist. "If Dante goes down there with that cigar, he’s going to get stung on the nose again."
"Let him," Rosalie grunted without looking up from her peas. "Man’s seventy-one years old and still thinks he can intimidate an insect."
The heavy oak door from the front hall opened, and Silvano stepped into the kitchen.
He had taken off his suit jacket and tie; his white linen shirt was unbuttoned at the throat, the sleeves rolled twice around his forearms. He carried a leather briefcase in his left hand and a rolled-up newspaper under his arm.
He didn't look at Rosalie. He looked across the copper pots and the drying herbs straight at Angela.
"The meeting in White Plains ran long," he said.
"Did they sign?" she asked, turning from the sink with a damp tea towel in her hands.
"They signed," he said, setting the briefcase on the edge of the table. "The terminal on the river is ours. All four hundred yards of deep water. No more Barzini boats between the bridge and the point."
"Good," she said.
He walked past Rosalie, stopping in front of Angela by the open window. He reached out and touched the emerald at her throat with his thumb, his fingers brushing against the warm, sun-browned skin of her collarbone.
She didn't flinch. She leaned into his chest with the easy, unthinking certainty of a tree that has found its water.
"You're late," she whispered.
"The traffic on the bridge was bad," he said.
"You missed lunch."
"I wasn't hungry for lunch," he murmured, his eyes dropping to her mouth.
Rosalie cleared her throat—a loud, dry, theatrical cough that sounded like a shovel hitting frozen gravel.
"If you two are going to stand there looking like an oil painting from the museum," the old woman said, picking up her basin of peas, "I'm going to take these out to the back porch where a Christian woman can do her work in peace."
Silvano didn't look back. "Take your time, Rosalie."
The screen door slapped shut behind her.
The kitchen was quiet except for the hum of the cicadas outside and the steady, ancient ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.
Silvano pulled Angela closer, his arms wrapping around the small of her back, lifting her slightly until her eyes were level with his. He looked at her bare shoulders—at the smooth, golden expanse of skin where twenty years of someone else’s shame had once been written in purple and black.
There was nothing there now. Only the sun.
"I looked at the camellias this morning," he said softly.
"They're done for the season, Silvano," she said, her fingers resting against the side of his neck, feeling the strong, steady pulse under his jaw. "They don't bloom in July."
"I know," he said, leaning down until his lips brushed against the soft, warm hollow beneath her ear. "I just wanted to make sure the roots were still holding."
Angela closed her eyes, her breath warm against his throat, her arms tightening around the man who had torn down the world she had been trapped in and built her a fortress from the stones.
May you like
"They're holding," she whispered against his skin. "They're holding for good."
Outside the tall windows, the Hudson rolled south toward the sea, broad and deep and quiet under the summer sky, carrying the old winter silt out into the salt where it could never hurt anyone again.
