Read It Twice

You don't remember walking back to the desk. One second you're in the doorway with his breath at your ear, and the next you're sitting in the leather chair with the contract in your lap and the fire hot on one side of your face.

Luca doesn't hover. He goes back to the window and stands with his hands in his pockets, watching the storm, as if you have all the time in the world. As if your father isn't somewhere in this house with one eye swollen shut.

So you do what he said. You read it twice.

The first time, the words slide off you. Term. Allowance. Dissolution. The second time, the bookkeeper in you wakes up, the part of your brain that has never once let a number go unchecked, and you read it like a balance sheet.

Clause one: the marriage lasts twelve months from the date of the ceremony.

Clause three: your father's debt to the Moretti family, in its entirety, is forgiven upon signature.

Clause four: you will reside at the villa. You will be provided with a private bedroom, which locks from the inside only.

You read that line again. Then you look up at his back.

Clause six: you will attend family functions as his wife. No one outside this room will be told the marriage is an agreement.

Clause seven: you will not leave the villa grounds without Matteo Greco or another man he approves.

Clause eight: you will not lie to him.

Clause nine stops you cold.

The First Party will not touch the Second Party in any intimate manner without her express request.

You read it a third time, which the contract doesn't strictly require.

"You put this in," you say.

"I wrote all of it." He doesn't turn around.

"Why?"

"Because I'm buying a year of your time." Now he does turn, and the firelight cuts his face in half. "Not you. There's a difference. I'd like you to remember it, since most people in this city won't."

You don't know what to do with that, so you look back down. Clause twelve: at the end of twelve months, an uncontested divorce, a settlement, and your signature on a nondisclosure agreement.

"Who's Matteo Greco?"

"Teo," he says. "He brought you in."

The man with the kind eyes and the umbrella. Your jailer, apparently. You could do worse.

You pick up the black pen. It's heavier than it looks. Then you put it down again.

"I want something added."

For the first time, something flickers across Luca Moretti's face. It might be surprise. It might be irritation. It's gone too fast to tell.

"You're in no position to negotiate."

"You said you don't do second chances," you say. "So I'm getting this right the first time. My father doesn't just get a bus ticket. He gets help. A real program, somewhere far from any card table. You pay for it, since you're so good at paying for things."

The silence stretches. Rain drums the glass.

Then he crosses the room, takes the pen from beside your hand, and leans over the desk. You watch him write in the margin under clause three, in neat, slanting ink: and the cost of Ray Callahan's treatment at a facility of the Second Party's choosing. He initials it. LM. Then he holds the pen out to you.

"Anything else, Ava?"

You want to say a hundred things. Why me. Why marriage. Why is your voice so soft when the rest of you is so cold. Instead you take the pen, and your fingers brush his.

He goes very still. So do you.

It's nothing. Half a second of skin. But his hand is warm, much warmer than you expected, and he pulls his away first.

You sign your name on the last page. Your handwriting looks like a stranger's.

He signs beneath it in one fluid stroke, as if he's done it a thousand times, and you realize that in this house he probably has. Not marriages. Contracts. Deals. Men who signed things in this room and walked out owing more than money.

"Teo," he says, not loudly.

The double doors open at once. Teo must have been standing right outside.

"Bring Mr. Callahan up."

They bring your father in through a side door, and your heart folds in half.

He looks older than he did a week ago. His left eye is purple and swollen closed, his lip split, his favorite flannel shirt torn at the pocket. He smells like stale coffee and fear. When he sees you, his whole face crumples.

"Ava," he says. "Oh, kid. No. What are you doing here?"

"Paying your tab, Dad."

You meant it to sound tough. It comes out wrecked.

He looks past you to Luca, and you watch your father, who used to carry you on his shoulders at the harbor fireworks, shrink like a man who's been hit too many times to stand up straight.

"Mr. Moretti, please. She's got nothing to do with this. She's a good girl, she works, she's got her exams…"

"It's done," Luca says. "Your debt is cleared."

Your father stares at him. Then at you. Then at the contract on the desk, and you see the moment he understands, because all the color drains out of him at once.

"No," he whispers.

"Teo will drive you to the bus station," Luca goes on, as if your father hasn't spoken. He holds out a thick envelope. "A ticket south, cash for a month, and the name of a clinic in Asheville. Your daughter's terms. They're expecting you Monday."

Your father doesn't take the envelope. Teo takes it for him and tucks it into the torn pocket of his shirt, almost gently.

"Can I say goodbye?" your father asks. "Please."

Luca looks at you. Waits. He's letting you decide, you realize. You nod.

Your father hugs you the way he did when you were small, too hard, his chin on top of your head. He smells like home and like everything that went wrong with it. You hold on and try not to cry in front of the man you just married on paper.

Then your father's mouth moves against your hair, so quietly you almost miss it.

"I'm sorry, kid," he breathes. "It wasn't supposed to be you."

You pull back to look at him. His good eye is wet and terrified, fixed on something over your shoulder.

Not on Luca.

On the doorway, where a moment ago you'd have sworn no one was standing.

"Dad," you say. "What does that mean?"

But Teo is already steering him out, and the doors close, and the only sound left is the rain and the scratch of Luca's pen as he dates the contract.

"We marry Saturday," he says without looking up.

You barely hear him. You're still staring at the empty doorway, and the wet footprint on the marble that isn't yours, or your father's, or Teo's.