Chapter 4 The Red Rose Returns

Claudia, Damiano's personal secretary, arrived at the studio door at three in the afternoon with a small black box and an expression that could not decide between professional blankness and human pity.

"Mr Ferretti asked me to return this to you," she said.

I took the box. Inside was my wedding ring — the one I had designed, the one with the twisted gold band and the single oval diamond. I turned it over in my palm.

Then I saw the hair.

It was caught in the hinge of the lid — a single strand, long and gold-red, the precise colour of autumn leaves in certain kinds of light. I lifted it out carefully and held it between my fingers.

Claudia was already turning to leave.

"Wait," I said.

She stopped, her back still toward me.

"His Red Rose," I said. "She's back, isn't she."

It wasn't a question. Claudia's shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. I watched her inhale.

"I'm sorry, Mrs Ferretti," she said, and closed the door behind her.

I sat down on the studio stool.

Serena Voss. Of course it was Serena Voss — the voice in that meeting, the lingering perfume on his jacket the night of my birthday, the way he had covered the woman in the car with such practiced ease. I had never met her. But I had spent eight years hearing her name from Damiano's mouth in his sleep — those early months of our marriage when he used to drink too much and lose his grip on the careful control he maintained every waking hour.

His Red Rose. His one concession to the word love in a language that didn't otherwise contain it.

I set the hair and the ring down on my paint-stained worktable. I looked at them for a long time.

Then I opened a new canvas.

I worked until dark without stopping — a self-portrait, the kind I hadn't painted in years. Not flattering, not constructed for anyone else's eye. Just honest. A woman sitting in a studio with her hands in her lap and light falling across her face from a window, and behind her, out of focus but unmistakable, a door that was not quite closed.

I knew, without sentimentality, that this was the last painting I would make in this house.

Luca appeared at seven o'clock, jacket still on, backpack over one shoulder.

"You're going to make us late," he said from the doorway. "The Ferretti dinner starts at eight. Dad said to be ready by seven-thirty."

"I'm aware of the time."

"You're painting." He said it the way he said everything — as a mild accusation.

I cleaned my brush slowly. "Yes. I'm painting."

"Is it finished?"

"Almost."

"We'll be late because of you again," he said. "Can you not — for once — keep track of the schedule? You make things difficult."

I looked at my son. Thirteen years old, with his father's jaw and his father's certainty and his father's ease with contempt. I had nearly died having him. For three days after he was born I was in intensive care and Damiano was in Shanghai at a deal closing, and I had held this baby alone in a hospital room and believed, with a ferocity that surprised me, that I would do anything for him.

I still believed it. That was the tragedy.

"Luca," I said.

"What."

"After tonight, I'm not going to be in your way anymore. I promise."

He studied me with something that might, in better light, have been curiosity. Then he shrugged and left.

I put down my brush, slipped the self-portrait off the easel, and carried it to the drying rack at the back of the studio. I tucked the gold-red hair into a small envelope and wrote a single word on the outside: evidence.

Then I went downstairs to get dressed for the last dinner I would ever attend as Damiano Ferretti's wife.