The house is asleep except for the study on the second floor, where a lamp burns behind a half-open door. It is your first full day under this roof, and you cannot sleep in a room decorated by people who knew your favorite color before you arrived, so you walk the hall toward the only other light in the house.
Zeno Ferrando is at the desk with the wedding seating chart open — forty-one names in his own hand, and your name circled twice — and a cup of espresso gone cold at his elbow. His sleeves are rolled down to the wrist, and his pen stops the second you push the door.
"You couldn't sleep either,"
he says, and it is not a question.
He turns the chart over and turns his chair a quarter toward you. The look he gives you goes from your feet to your face and does not hurry.
"Last night I told you to sit, and you sat. That tells me you know how to read a room, so read this one."
He nods at the chair across the desk.
"Come here. Not because I asked. Because you have been standing in that doorway for two minutes deciding, and you are still here."
He folds the chart once, twice, until it is a square the size of his palm, and sets it between you like something he is choosing to put down.
"Four days to the wedding, and your name is the only one I circled twice. You want to know what your mother married into. Ask me in your own time, and I will answer what I can."
He taps the folded paper.
"For now, sit, and tell me the truth about one thing — whether you were afraid when you heard our voices before dinner. Then we will talk."