Chapter 6: The Weight of Being Seen
Beatrice read the message by accident.
She had come back downstairs for Lily's spare inhaler — the one kept in the kitchen drawer, the backup to the backup — and Leo's phone was lit on the hallway table, the screen still bright, the words sitting there in plain view.
She stood very still.
*The maid becomes the message.*
She had been called worse things.
She had been called nothing at all, which was its own category of worse.
But she had never been called a message before.
She had never been the kind of person anyone needed to send.
Leo came out of the study at a half-run and saw her face before he saw the phone.
"You read it," he said.
"It was on the table." She kept her voice level.
"Facing up."
He picked up the phone.
His expression was controlled in the way that things are controlled when the effort of controlling them is enormous.
"This changes the plan," he said.
"No," Beatrice said.
"It doesn't."
"Beatrice—"
"If I leave this house frightened, Lily will know something is wrong.
She reads me." She crossed her arms over her chest, careful of her bandaged hand.
"She has read me since she was four years old.
If I am afraid, she is afraid.
If I am calm, she can be calm.
That is how it works between us."
Leo stared at her.
"I am not going to be their message," she said.
"I am going to pack Lily's bag, put her rabbit in the front pocket where she can reach it, and get on whatever plane you've arranged.
And she is going to think it's an adventure, because I am going to make it one."
A long silence.
"You understand what they're capable of," Leo said.
"I understand what they did to Elena." She held his gaze.
"I'm still standing here."
He looked at her for a long moment — not the way he had looked at her before, when she was the maid, the furniture, the woman in the corner.
He looked at her the way you look at someone you have badly underestimated and are only now beginning to understand.
"I'll have two men with you the entire flight," he said.
"And Mateo's contact in Verona will meet you at the arrivals gate."
"Fine."
"I'll follow within forty-eight hours.
As soon as the task force has what they need from Victoria's phone."
"Fine."
"Beatrice." He stopped.
Seemed to search for something.
"Are you afraid?"
She considered lying.
She was very good at it — not the cruel kind of lying, but the functional kind, the kind that kept things moving when the truth would only slow everything down.
"Yes," she said instead.
"But I've been afraid before and it didn't stop me.
It won't stop me now."
Something in his face broke open very slightly, the way a window breaks — not shattering, just a single crack along the edge, letting in air.
"I'll be in Verona in forty-eight hours," he said again.
As if saying it twice made it a promise he could keep.
"I know," she said.
She went upstairs.
Lily was awake, sitting up in bed with the rabbit in her lap, looking at the door as if she had been waiting.
"Are we going somewhere?" she asked.
Beatrice stopped in the doorway.
"How did you know?"
"You have your serious face." Lily tilted her head.
"But not the scary serious.
The other one."
"What other one?"
"The one that means everything is going to be okay but it's going to be a lot of work first."
Beatrice crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed.
Her wrapped hand rested on her knee.
Lily looked at it, then back up at her face.
"We're going to visit your Aunt Giulia," Beatrice said.
"In Italy.
Your father arranged it."
Lily's eyes went wide.
"Italy?"
"Italy."
"Does Aunt Giulia have the garden with the lemon trees?"
"I believe she does."
Lily threw her arms around Beatrice's neck with the sudden, total commitment that only small children manage, the kind that assumes the other person will catch them.
Beatrice caught her.
Held her with one good arm and one bandaged hand and all the steadiness she had left.
"Can we pick lemons?" Lily asked into her shoulder.
"We can pick as many lemons as you like."
"And make the cake?
The one Bee makes with the yellow frosting?"
"If your Aunt Giulia has the right pan."
Lily pulled back.
Her face was bright, the way it got before something good.
"I'm going to pack my drawing things.
Can I bring my drawing things?"
"You can bring your drawing things."
Lily scrambled off the bed and began pulling open drawers with the focused urgency of a child who has just been given a mission.
Beatrice watched her.
The small hands.
The dark hair.
The rabbit set carefully on the pillow so it wouldn't get lost in the packing.
She pressed her good hand flat against her knee and breathed.
In forty-eight hours, Leo had said.
She was going to hold him to that.
But downstairs, Mateo had just received a second message — from a different number, one that had never contacted him before.
May you like
It contained a single photograph.
And when he saw what was in it, he walked into the study, closed the door, and did not come out for a long time.
